It is sadly ironic in this year more than most that American filmmakers have lost the knack to make exciting, inspiring, entertaining American political films.  Worse, if politicians of both parties themselves have become the joke due to their increasingly partisan exploits, why can't films about them be funny? Alas SWING VOTE joins this ballot of mildly ambitious and only modestly successful attempts to capture the spirit — both patriotic and petty — of modern politics in our country.  An utterly misguided script lets down star Kevin Costner in a story which desperately wants to be a Capra-esque, red-white-and-blueblooded tale of democracy in action, but lacks the energy to fulfill its campaign promise.  What should be potent political satire becomes silly parody of hollow candidates and utter abuse of serious issues for cheap laughs.  Convincing neither as a campaign-year call to action nor a timely comedy, SWING VOTE will find it difficult to win a majority of fans at the box office.

Credit due to director Joshua Michael Stern and co-screenwriter Jason Richman: their heart is in the right place — yearning to rally apathetic American voters into polling stations to take control of their nation's future — but their film sacrifices civic relevance for oddly humorless comic fantasy.  What should be biting political satire is reduced to an electoral fable which lacks the punch or pleasure to entice audiences into its altered reality.

Costner as "Bud" Johnson, an alcoholic screw-up of a single father, leads a sadly unexploited cast of talented actors including Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci, Nathan Lane and Dennis Hopper.  Bud stumbles through life and his parental responsibilities as father to Molly (enlivened by youngster Madeline Carroll), the only mature being within a thousand yards of Bud.  Sadly for the character and the film, she spends nearly all two hours of the film prodding, nagging, crying and pleading for her hapless, helpless father to stand up like a (sober) man and deliver on his parental duty to care for her.  In perhaps the most fatal flaw of this story, Bud barely ekes out fulfilling his fatherly role by the end credits, and one suspects that's far too late for most audiences to either applaud or enjoy the effort.

The plot revolves around a pact made with Bud to cast his disinterested vote in the election as research for her school essay.  Sounds simple enough and undeniably all-American in its family values, right?  Seven decades earlier, Frank Capra and Sidney Buchman would have added a fast-talking female lead, a cabinet of indelible character actors, some really swell hats and hit this story out of the cinematic ballpark.  Regrettably, SWING VOTE is left standing in the parking lot by comparison, hoping to scalp a ticket to that show.  Of course Bud recklessly, blithely loses his job at the egg-packing factory in tiny Texico, New Mexico, drinks his day away, leaving his tender and ever-disappointed daughter at the polling place without a ride or a role model she so badly needs.

In a sad (alas, not touching) gesture to redeem her father's pissed-away reputation, she attempts to cast his presidential ballot for him until an accidentally-pulled power plug (alas, typical of the script's painfully obvious mechanics) entraps his erstwhile vote.  While the story then ensnares Bud in an overblown media circus as his lone uncast ballot will break the electoral tie and chose the leader of the Free World, her ploy is a glossed-over symptom of the general abuse-through-neglect that Molly suffers under Bud's custody.  The eventual, useless scene where Molly runs to her drug-abusing mother for guidance certainly provides a worse example of parent for the girl, but it unconscionably fails to prove why Bud should be allowed to raise this poor girl either.

The rest of the political shenanigans ensuing from Bud's media-fed celebrity are mere window dressing for this otherwise pathetic tale of forsaken responsibility which is neither funny nor emotionally stirring enough to carry the burden.  Grammer as the sitting GOP President and Hopper as the tree-hugging liberal challenger are mere ciphers of the political arena, thinly-drawn caricatures of even the feeblest real-world politicians which voters may ponder as the better of balloted evils.  Hopper looks utterly lost throughout the film (and who would blame him) while Grammer endures but is given no fuel to propel his half of the plot.  Faring even worse are Stanley Tucci and Nathan Lane as the opposing campaign managers, scuttling the bona fide comedic talents of two actors who inevitably shine with superior material, yet cannot salvage miracles out of this mud.

Director Stern attempts to re-engage audience attention periodically with flashy camera work and editing, but the style points only emphasize the dearth of substance.  The two candidates inanely flip-flop on their most cherished platform issues, laughably bartering away abortion rights, immigration policy and the environmnet just to buy one vote.  Not even their own obvious, rote chagrin can restore a spark of humanity to these bureaucratic buffoons.  Even worse, both campaign runners gleefully sell their souls to claim the win in this absurd fairy tale.  Sadly, the script de-pants these pols as identifiable dramatic personae for a handful of cheap, strained laughs which, once gained, utterly gut the relevance and redemption of the finale.  In the end, no one really cares who Costner's bumbler elects in the voting booth since not even the most apathetic, uninformed member of the electorate would want either of these clowns to preside over America. 

Costner's capping soliloquy amid a head-to-head debate between the nominated numbskulls leaves the star twisting in the wind, his words carrying only the weight of the leaden lines forged in the script and forced from his lips.  After two hours of dramatic effort, Molly and a local news reporter (Paula Patton, another talent set adrift) manage to prompt Bud one teeny baby step ahead in his fatherly duties.  Worse still, the timely issues he raises to the candidates aren't even his own: Bud is still cribbing notes from his fellow Americans who actually attend class in the real world and write letters of desperation to represent their plight.  After a night of cramming for this ultimate civics test, Bud must read off others' papers to even ask the questions, let alone understand the answers.  His ensuing walk to the voting booth is not redemption of a lost and longing soul, a beleagered father or a disillusioned citizen; it's merely rote fulfillment of a mechanical plot point too late to cast any meaning into the act.

It pains me to rate this film so poorly, since I had hoped this film would make the best of a highly pivotal election year.  Instead SWING VOTE shows great promise but, like its own characters, fails to deliver the goods to its own constituency of moviegoers.  Do yourself a favor and cast your cinematic ballot for Capra's MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON to see how a united ticket of American politics and drama can win in a landslide.