Blu-Ray Review: Election

Reading, Writing, Revenge! Who couldn’t love a look at the darker side of academia! As with most other MTV productions the film Election, directed by Alexander Payne attempts to both satirize and affirm the establishment at the same time. While this works for the most part, the film ultimately feels a little hollow. This is not to say the performances by its leads Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon aren’t funny and ferocious at times, but its not so steady writing leaves a little to be desired, as does the supporting cast.

Set in suburban Omaha, Nebraska, Election revolves around history and civics teacher Jim McAllister (as played by Matthew Broderick) and one of his most enthusiastic students Tracy Flick (as played by Reese Witherspoon), who is nominated for student class president. However Jim thinks Tracy’s masked manipulative personality would not make her an ideal candidate, and so he sets a rival candidate against her, as played by Chris Klein, in addition to his own attempts to stop her.

Although relatively low budget and obscure when the film was initially released it was a sleeper hit in 1999, and has since gone on to acquire a cult film status. It even made it to Bravo’s 100 Funniest Movies, ranking #61, and #9 on Entertainment Weekly’s list of 50 Best High School Movies.

This Blu-ray presentation on the other hand is pretty spectacularly clean and sharp, with very little grain any where, as well as true HD sound (though the soundtrack doesn’t really put your home theater system to any great test, being a comedy). The disc is rounded-out by an audio commentary by Alexander Payne, which seems a little sparse even for a dvd. Still worth a view, even if the final product could have used a little more work.