Irresistible: Jon Stewart directs a political comedy with less bite than we expected, but some thoughts to chew on
By Karen Gordon
Rating: B-minus
If you, like me, have wondered what’s on former Daily Show host-turned-filmmaker Jon Stewart’s mind heading into the 2020 election, you might be surprised by Irresistible.
Stewart, who wrote and directed this surprisingly light political satire, takes aim at Super PACs, political strategists, the media, and optimistically continues to reach out to an informed American electorate.
Irresistible, by implication, supports the accusation that “Washington bubble” insiders and standard procedure cynicism are much to blame for the disconnect with an angry electorate that elected you-know-who.
Dueling political operatives played by Rose Byrne and Steve Carell in Rosewater.
Steve Carell - part of Stewart’s long-ago Daily Show “correspondent” team - stars as Gary Zimmer, a senior political strategist wh'o’d been a key advisor to the Hilary Clinton campaign. In the wake of the 2016 election (which Stewart wordlessly characterizes as a gut punch to America), Zimmer is looking for a new candidate to bolster the Democrats’ chances in the middle-American swing states that lost the Dems the election. (Clinton won the popular vote by several million, but lost the Electoral College because of a few key states).
He finds his fighter when one of his staffers shows him a video that’s gone viral.
In it, dairy farmer Jack Hastings (Chris Cooper) storms into City Hall in the fictional town of Deerlaken, Wisconsin to give Council holy hell. Jack, a retired Marine colonel and an obvious salt-of-the-earth guy is standing up for the rights of area undocumented workers, defending the little guy eloquently and with authority.
Bingo.
Zimmer books a private jet, wardrobes up in what he assumes is middle American attire, and persuades Cooper to run as a Democrat against the incumbent Mayor Braun (Brent Sexton). Jack is game, and, supported by his daughter Diana Hastings (Mackenzie Davis), agrees to take a run at the job.
Director Jon Stewart at work
The incumbent mayor, however, is supported by the better financed GOP, who have assigned the campaign to Zimmer’s old foe, Faith Brewster (Rose Byrne), a cool, unflappable strategist and a spin master of the highest order.
Now, it’s game on. Deerlaken might be a small town with seemingly low stakes, but both national parties are involved. Money must be raised for the win.
Although this is fiction, and comedy, there are real life jumping off points for Stewart, notably the 2017 Georgia election to fill a seat in Congress that had become vacant. When first time Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff started making significant headway in the normally Republican district, both parties saw it as a significant contest and poured millions into the respective campaigns. It became, by many estimates, the most expensive contest in the history of congressional elections.
Although they are different mediums , It’s hard not to compare this film to Armando Iannucci’s viciously brilliant TV series Veep, an excoriating satire of Washington political insiders and strategists. Where Veep went for the jugular with vampiric glee, Stewart has kept the tone of Irresistible light and even gentle. The townspeople are largely lovable and eccentric, the Washington folks, savvy, spoiled, condescending and all about the winning the game at any cost (but likeable in their own way).
Keeping it light makes the movie easy to watch, which may have been his strategy. Stewart is a very smart political analyst with an excellent understanding of the American political system and where it has gone wrong.
Like the team behind Veep, Stewart is a comedian, and a satirist, but he’s not a cynic, and he’s profoundly humanistic. His tendency towards humanism and the belief that we can rise to our better nature was strongly present in his solid directorial debut, Rosewater (2014), and it’s here as well.
The problem with Irresistible, though, is that while it has charm and an interesting twist or two, it lacks bite.
It’s gentleness overshadows the politics and so the movie feels like a light fish-out-of-water comedy, and even a rom-com because the most tension in the film isn’t between the politics or the candidates, but rather between Zimmer and Brewster.
Perhaps Stewart recognized that, and so he’s added something to the end of the movie to bring it all home.
Keep watching through the closing credits. About a minute in, Stewart gets to his point far more sharply and directly than he did before they rolled.
He includes a brief, and strangely charming back and forth with Republican Trevor Potter, former Chairman of the Federal Election Committee, Founder and President of the Campaign Legal Centre, and a critic of the “dark money” in campaigns. Potter talks directly about campaign financing and its legal loopholes with an immediacy and urgency Stewart used to bring us every weeknight.
It’s essential viewing, even if it shows up late.
Irresistible. Written and directed by Jon Stewart. Starring Steve Carell, Chris Cooper and Rose Byrne. Available On Demand, Friday, June 26.