‘I’ ON CULTURE
The new Sandra Bullock movie Our Brand is Crisis is a silly attempt at political satire that is, frankly, so dumb that just about all the humor is gone. We have, instead, mostly a series of wisecracks and gags that do not even come close to justifying the cost of admission. It is supposedly reality-based in that some American campaign consultants went to Bolivia in 2002 and things fell apart, and now the Bolivians barely speak to us.
In this movie, Jane Bodine (Bullock) is a consultant who has lost at least one election too many in the United States and, needing a paycheck, agrees to support the candidacy of a rich, uptight conservative candidate in an unnamed country (based on Bolivia). She had previously had a nervous breakdown. Adding to the motivation is her chance to go against rival consultant Pat Candy (Billy Bob Thornton), who has beaten her several times before. Her nickname is “Calamity Jane” because of her daring work that has lost her races as often as winning them.
All the campaign advisers are shown to be idiots, particularly Jane. She gives a stirring speech to her workers, only discovering at the end that almost nobody spoke English. And, of course, she doesn’t speak Spanish. The campaign seems to go on interminably (it felt like I was sitting through a whole presidential campaign season in one afternoon at the theater). There is no attempt at all to try to understand the feelings of the people of the country. Ironically, it is the ultimate form of imperialism: advising politicians of other countries we know nothing about.
I have always liked Bullock. She comes across generally as nice, but there is almost no chance to show her as likable in the film. She is officious, more driven by a need to beat Candy than to do anything useful for the people of the country. I have met a lot of political consultants; they are generally far more idealistic than most, working for candidates who believe what they do. Here, everything comes across as a money game. Bullock’s personal charm barely gets to shine.
The cast, overall, is pretty good. Their real problem is that they are not being shown as real people, just as symbolic stand-ins. None seem to really be idealistic; they mouth the words, but things come out wrong. When Jane’s colleagues talk about the rights of the people, they are talking about a candidate who really has no interest in those rights, a point they somehow fail to understand. Everything revolves around the money. They want to run an American campaign in a country with a different culture that they seem to have no interest in understanding. And that means that some really fine actors, people like Anthony Mackie and Ann Dowd, are around for some wisecracks and sight gags, but are not part of a coherent story.
I always write about the need for strong scripts. This one, by Peter Straughan, is muddled. It is based on truth (James Carville fought a nasty political race in Bolivia years ago), but is more like a reality show in which cast members have to pretend they are saying things for the first time while following a poorly written script.
There was a documentary made of the real attempt to affect the Bolivian vote. Ironically, it had the same name as this film. But this movie is supposed to be satire. The real problem is that it seemed not to be certain of exactly what it was poking fun at and, as a result, is not really funny.
There are always real issues when the U.S. sends people out to affect elections elsewhere. And oftentimes things backfire. See Israel, where after American Democratic Party operatives ran election campaigns for the opposition party portraying Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu as more or less insane, he but did as much as possible to thwart President Obama’s plans. Perhaps someone will try a satire about that one day. Unfortunately, the best person for that, Mel Brooks, is a bit too old.
This is a film to miss. It is not funny and wastes a lot of good talent. We need good political satire, but this is so dumb that it is simply a waste of time.
