Re-election film 2025

“Re-Election” is a Hanging Chad of a Comedy

Re-election film 2025

We’ve all had the dream of going back to school, armed with what we know now, imagining the power of what we’d do differently; but a new film squanders the conceit. In his unsuccessful comedy Re-Election (D), director Adam Saunders plays an aimless middle-aged sad sack who re-enrolls in high school to run for class president again after an epic fail, desperate to capture the mojo he lost as a teenager. The goofball character at the center of the film is the first of its problems. The script does a disservice to everyone involved as the comic parts aren’t particularly distinctive, and the dramatic parts feel like an afterschool special. And for a film about a political campaign, there’s not really an insightful takeaway there either, as one can’t help but think of “Tracy Flick” and all the pioneers of wry modern electioneering allegory. The serious presence of Bex Taylor-Klaus as an earnest character schooling the protagonist about issues of non-binary identity and of Tony Danza as a father figure of sorts prattling on about something or other do little to overcome the notion thst everyone acting in this film seems to be in a different universe, and few of those universes feel like a real modern high school. There also seems to be a fire sale on the song “Here Comes the Hotstepper,” which serves as an inexplicable nostalgia stand-in a time or two. Like the Howard Dean scream that doomed a campaign some two decades ago, this film seems ready to roar and then sort of prattles off the dais. 

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