The Campaign

Even in the midst of a contentious election year, both ends of the political spectrum can agree that The Campaign misses the mark.

This low-brow comedy has an amusing premise, pitting goofballs Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis against one another in a congressional race that pokes fun equally at both major parties.

Yet the execution isn’t as funny as it sounds, with the film more concerned with fart jokes than edgy political satire. It’s more of a “Saturday Night Live” skit stretched to feature length.

Ferrell plays Cam Brady, a dim-witted consummate politician and Democrat incumbent seeking a fifth term as a U.S. congressman from North Carolina. Galifianakis is his unlikely challenger, a small-town tour guide whose disapproving father (Brian Cox) encourages him to run in order to secure a payday from a pair of greedy executives looking for political influence.

Brady talks tough but stumbles on the campaign trail, starting one scandal after another that includes everything from inadvertently punching a baby to making inappropriate phone calls. Huggins then is remade into a cutthroat mudslinger at the urging of a hired campaign manager (Dylan McDermott) with ulterior motives of his own.

Ferrell and Galifianakis each have their moments as the cartoonish adversaries whose misguided desperation to become elected leads to various foibles on the campaign trail. Galifianakis (The Hangover) has a naive underdog charm, but Ferrell’s over-the-top antics become repetitive.

The Campaign can’t decide whether it wants to be an all-out lampoon, or a sharp-tongued satire, or even an earnest story of political redemption. It hints at each of those without committing to any of them, and compromises laughs in the process.

Veteran director Jay Roach (Meet the Parents) won an Emmy for the made-for-cable political comedy Recount, but here the script doesn’t give him much to work with.

Perhaps the same can be said for the unfortunate state of contemporary partisan politics in the United States, from the congressmen who devote more energy to accepting donations and winning elections than representing their constituents, to the wealthy lobbyists who manipulate the system, to the voters who blindly cater to empty rhetoric.

They’re all represented here, but treated with kid gloves and wild exaggerations in a film that produces some broad laughs yet could have done more given its ripe comedic target.

Rated R, 85 minutes.