The Campaign (2012)

I was very surprised by just how enjoyable this movie was.  I was also glad that I watched it after the acrimonious recent election season.  Roger Ebert wrote that it was  'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington' if that movie had been written by The Onion.  The whole seedy corporate interests wanting to have the Senator in their pocket so they can perpetrate immeasurable wrongs without fear of being called out kind of election movie.

The story is that Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) is a good ole boy seeking re-election to his long held Senate post in North Carolina.  He is just not as amenable to corruption as a billionaire industrialist might like--although he is smarmy politician through and through.  So the billionaires put up a puppet candidate, Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakas), who backfires on them.  Almost every terrible thing that you have heard about dirty politics is evidenced in this movie, but it is all very funny--a great trick, because in real life it is not funny at all.  But the power of comedy is that you accept unpleasant truths packaged in an easier to accept format, but once the movie is over and the lights come up, you are more willing to see the truth underneath all the joking.