Jenn’s Review: Swing Vote

Barack? McCain?

What if the future president of America rested squarely on one lone, individual vote? So is the question presented in Swing Vote, starring familiar names such as Kevin Costner, Kelsey Grammer, and George Lopez. The movie begins with the viewers looking into the daily life of Molly Johnson, a highly intelligent grade school girl living in the small town of Texaco, New Mexico, with her underachieving and lazy father, Bud. She cooks, she cleans, she even drives! On election day, Molly expresses the importance of the voting to Bud — which is no doubt a message to the movie patron as well, stating that it is the American civic duty. Bud replies with a smart aleck comeback, which gathered chuckles from the other four people in the movie theater.

Although promising his daughter he would vote, Bud screws up big time. After in-sourcing and many acts of laziness cause Bud to be laid off from his job at the Egg Factory, he decides that getting smashed would be the best way to retaliate. When Molly finds Bud unfit to vote, she decides to take matters into her own hands. However, while sneakily attempting to vote in Bud’s place, an error with the voting machine occurs, and Molly frantically rushes out to return to the smelly trailer in which she and Bud reside.

Life continues on as normal for Bud and Molly. The presidential election is at a standstill, being split completely down the middle. The error of the voting machine was discovered, and with the election riding on the sole county of Texaco, a confused Bud is given a chance to recast his ballot. Both presidential candidates scurry to win his vote, abandoning everything they stand for in the process. The rest of the movie conveys themes of family, humanity, and love all with a touch of humor involved. Who will Bud vote for? I can’t spoil that for you! Seriously!

I thought the movie was decent, although not amazing. Its humor and serious undertones will always leave you captivated. However, it was trying a bit hard — attempting to touch upon all the serious controversies in our modern society today with silly jokes in order to make the tone of the movie continuously light. It will definitely rejuvenate your spirit and have your patriotism at an all time high upon leaving the theater. I give it one thumb up and one thumb down… looks like my review needs a swing vote of its own!

Swing your butt on down to see Swing Vote!

pleasure blogging with you!
~Jenn

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

Movies This Weekend! 8/1/08

Ugh.  Sorry guys.  I’ve finally been able to get a good meal in and a much needed nap.  Having two jobs is really starting to get to me, but hopefully I’ll be able to pull through.  I am upset that I missed the one year anniversary of this blog though.  I’ll have to do something special for it …. I’m not really sure yet.  Big blogs can do giveaways and stuff like that, but I’m just little ol me, reporting on movies when I get a chance!  In any case, this post is for the movies this weekend! (Which I missed last week)

This week brings a couple features to the table… but for some reason I still think it will be The Dark Knight putting up strong numbers.  What a movie… I can’t believe how many records it’s broken.  Well, here we go!

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - Directed by Rob Cohen, Rated PG-13

Brendan Fraser returns as adventurer Rick O’ Connell, but this time, he’s in China.  The ancient Han Emperor has been resurrected, and threatens to bring the entire world under his rule.  Doomed into suspended animation by a double crossing sorceress, the Emperor and his 10000 man army have been lying in wait.  When Alex, Rick’s son, is tricked into re-animating the army, he must seek help from his father, the only one he knows who has had experience dealing with the undead.

Joe’s Take - From a personal point of view, I want to see this movie.  I’ve been a fan of The Mummy series, and I think that this is a pretty cool extension.  I don’t see this movie being anything like the others though, which could be a good or a bad thing depending on what the viewer thinks.  The problem with this is that they don’t seem to want to compete with what is being released at the same time or before.  I don’t see much excitement.  I get the feeling that a lot was given away in trailers, which is usually reserved for those spoof movies.  Not saying that this is a spoof film, and while I’m excited, I don’t know how many others will be.

The Square - Directed by Nash Edgarton

Raymond is stuck in the monotony of a loveless marriage.  He becomes entangled in an affair with a beautiful, trouble girl named Carla.  Carla, wanting to get out of her own marriage, presents Raymond with a proposition.  She takes the fruits of her husband’s latest crime, and offers to run away with Ray and start a new life.  Intrigued, Ray hires an arsonist to cover their tracks.  However, the plan goes horribly wrong, alarms go off, and suspicions arise.  When the dust finally settles, Raymond and Carla begin receiving blackmail letters, and are threatened by her ex-husband.  As the deadline set by the mystery blackmailer approaches, Raymond and Carla find out how far they will really go for love.

Joe’s Take - Not gonna lie… never heard of this movie before.  The story does sound interesting, and it’s something that I would like to try to see if I had extra time.. but I don’t.  It doesn’t rank high on the priority list, and with the little press that it’s gotten, I just don’t see The Square making any sort of impact on the box office this weekend.  Anyone else heard anything about this?

Swing Vote - Directed by Joshua Michael Stern, Rated PG-13

Bud Johnson is an apathetic, beer swilling guy who has just coasted through life, and its passing him by.  The light of his life is his precocious, overachieving daughter Molly.  Molly is the one to take care of both of them, and is doing a great job until election day.  She sets into place a series of events that leaves the determination of the President of the United States dependent on one vote: Her father’s.

Joe’s Take - Another movie that interests me, but I don’t see it doing really well.  It’s pretty well placed in terms of time, especially with our current presidential election campaigns, but it seems a little cliche.  What I do like is that it seems like it could be like Thank You for Smoking, which is one of my favorite movies.  I love that sentence I just wrote.  Something seems wrong about it.  Anyway, there’s too much competition for this movie to do really well, but I think it will pique some interest.

That’s it for the wide releases this week.  I know that there are a lot of people looking forward to the release of Pineapple Express, and I’m hoping to get a chance to see that before it comes out, but who knows!  I’ll have to update this post with pictures later, as I’m really tired, but hope you guys are having a great week and an even better weekend!  See you at the movies… right?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!