Masterminds (4/5 Stars)

To call “Masterminds” a movie “based on a true story,” streches that line about as far as it can go. Truth may have provided the basic premise: in 1997 a man named David Ghannt, an employee of the Loomis Fargo armored truck company, stole $17 million in cash from the warehouse he worked at. Everything else seems entirely made up for laughs with a blatant disregard as to whether the audience would believe it had actually happened. In fact, the movie plays like they just assumed we wouldn’t care. It was funny so I really didn’t care.

Take one scene foe example: After the robbery, the plan is for David Ghannt (played by Zach Galifinakis) to immediately run away to Mexico. To help his escape, he stuffs $20,000 in cash into his underwear to the point where it noticeably bulges out in all directions. Also he needs a disguise. So he is given a platinum blonde shoulder length wig and yellow contacts with feline pupils. It’s pretty funny but I’m quite certain the real David Ghannt didn’t try to get through airport security in that manner.

The movie was directed by Jared Hess (Napolean Dynamite, Nacho Libre) and arrives in theaters a year late due to the bankruptcy of its parent company. Its delay has two main consequences. One is that it represents a too-late starring vehicle for Zach Galifinakis whose star power has ebbed significantly from its peak in the early 2010s. He hasn’t headlined a movie since 2013. On the other hand, it catches on the upswing the growing star of Kaitlyn “Crazy Eyes” McKinnon, who in a supporting part shows off her innate ability to be funny in every frame shes in. A year ago, before Ghostbusters and Hillary Clinton’s endless campaign (McKinnon plays Clinton on “Saturday Night Live”) my reaction may have been “Who is she?” but now it is “Oh it’s her!”

The movie would have you believe David Ghannt did the heist to win the love of Kelly Campbell, a former co-employee, here played by Kristin Wiig. Who knows if that is true, but it certainly makes Ghannt look more pathetic, a good move playing to the talent of Zach Galifinakis. The brain behind the heist is a man named Steve Chambers (played by Owen Wilson). Owen Wilson proves his stock utility as reliably affable. Steve Chambers apparently had the brilliant idea to make Ghannt do all the hard work, send him to Mexico, and then pay a hit man (played by Jason Sudeikis) to kill Ghannt. That sounds like pretty dark stuff. Owen Wilson plays him like you know it’s all really sad, but we got to do this, so let’s just get it over with and remain friends with everyone who is still alive. Playing Chamber’s wife is Mary Elizabeth Ellis (the waitress from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), an actress adept at playing white trash and well suited to her role. She looks and sounds ridiculous. One of the first things Chambers and her do upon receiving their money is to get dental braces.

The only person miscast here is Jason Sudeikis. His hit man is ridiculous. For instance, upon purchasing guns, he decides to go for the 1700s musket that he has to pour gunpowder into. He’s that type of guy. The problem is Sudeikis neither looks nor acts anything like anybody actually tough. It’s too cartoonish and this character would have been better had someone like Liam Neeson or Danny Trejo been cast.

The movie, like many movies, perhaps leans too much on spectacle. Zach Galifinakis’ trip to Mexico is littered with many jokes that could be filed under the ‘funny hat’ category. It’s never not funny but also not particularly memorable either. And the climax of the story is too big to truly ground the comedy. The Chambers family in an act of profound stupidity, that is never truly mined for its great potential, throw a gigantic redneck party entitled “Neptune’s Conch” in their new McMansion. The FBI stake it out in one plotline and Zach Galifinakis in another plotline dresses like James Bond in order to infiltrate and rescue his now kidnapped love. This is one of those times when you wonder what these obviously talented people would have come up with had they not been given such a large budget to spend on gigantic spectacle. “Ghostbusters” earlier this year had the same sort of problem in its climax. The movie slipped into action movie territory upon the greased slide of easy money when it should have been reaching an emotional climax in that higher territory where the best comedy resides. In effect, the ending is weaker than the beginning or middle.

Still it’s a good movie. It tries to deliver laughs a minutes and much more often than not succeeds.

The Campaign (4/5 Stars)

Five-term incumbent congressional candidate for North Carolina, Cam Brady, played by Will Ferrell, has invited his challenger, the local tour guide/novice political contender, Marty Huggins, played by Zach Galifinakis, to a civility brunch. Marty unwittingly attends it. Both candidates step up to the podium and profess their wish to have a civil campaign for Congress devoid of all the negative smear tactics that mar the American political landscape. Then as Marty sits down, Cam comes up and announces that he has a slideshow of his opponent, a helpful introduction he has put together for the press corps. Cam shows several embarrassing photos of Marty, digs in a few passive aggressive slights, and shows a picture of Marty's two pet pug dogs. Pug dogs, Cam explains, are Chinese, just an interesting fact for everyone in the press ought to meditate about. Then Cam sits down and as Marty is confusedly trying to figure out what just happened, Cam whispers with venom, “Welcome to the fucking show.”

Above all, “The Campaign,” is funny. Its best attribute is that it allows two veteran and extremely skilled comedians with vastly different styles to play off each other. Will Ferrell uses his best alpha male aggressive egomaniacal man-boy techniques to play Cam Brady, a politician who will remind you of several of the more alpha male aggressive egomaniacal man-boys of American politics in the recent past. He has the hair of Jon Edwards, the libido of Bill Clinton, the grammar of George W. Bush, and the camera techniques of Anthony Weiner. Marty Huggins, will remind you less of American politicians than of Zach Galifinakis himself, in that he has an out-of-shape physique, an out-of-style facial hairstyle, and an effeminate weirdo aura. This generally plays out with Marty trying to attack in a terribly feeble and ineffective way, while Cam counterattacks with far too much power ending up causing himself as much if not more damage than he inflicts on Marty. See the scene where they trash talk each other in the first debate or the attempt to kiss the same baby afterwards.

The movie also does a great job of setting up a comic technique that let’s just call “Line-o-Rama.” A “Line-o-Rama” is a set-up that allows several punch lines to fit into the same joke. The best instance of this is when Marty tells his family at the dinner table that he is running for Congress and thus they will all be under much media scrutiny. Marty promises his sons that he will not be mad as long as they come clean to him about anything embarrassing before the press does. What follows is a series of confessions about increasingly weird and perverted things, all of which are funny because Marty has promised he would not get mad no matter what they may be. Comedically speaking, “Line-o-Ramas” are great because of the efficiency they entail. For every one setup you can get five-to-ten laughs and “The Campaign” does this several times in the span of the movie.

The movie also does a fine job of playing comedic jujitsu with its marketing trailers. A huge problem with trailers for comedies is that they invariably give away the best jokes. Jokes generally need to be a surprise, so it is always a bad idea to put the best ones in a trailer. But here, either the jokes in the trailer are actually not in the movie, or they are tweaked in such a way that they still work as surprises. The hunting scene in the trailer where Marty shoots Cam in the leg with a crossbow actually works better in the movie because of what they changed. In fact, the trailer may have even made what happened in the movie funnier. How “The Campaign” was marketed is something that should be imitated by other comedies.

The movie’s main weakness is its length. At 97 minutes it sometimes feels like it is skipping scenes. It usually is a good idea to make a comedy as lean as possible in order to keep up a fast pace, but were losing something in terms of character development and targets for satire. There is too much to make fun of with this subject and too little of it gets onto the screen. What is there though works is relevant scathing social satire. 

The satire comes from how either of these candidates could ever reasonably get elected. The movie employs the Motch brothers, a pair of billionaire brothers played by Jon Lithgow and Dan Akroyd to pull this off. They have supported Cam Brady with untold amounts of money in the last five elections and have succeeded getting him elected each time. This time however Cam has drunk-dialed and left a very salacious and adulterous voicemail on the wrong answering machine (Seth Macbreyer’s to be exact). His numbers plummet and the Motch brothers look for someone to replace Cam. They settle on Marty Huggins, as he is the son of a well-known ex-politician (Brian Cox). The Motch brothers hire a campaign manager, played by a snaky Dylan McDermot, to form Marty into less of a weirdo and more of an American. First step is redecorating Marty’s house with lots of rustic wood paneling and replacing Marty’s beloved pugs with a Chocolate Labrador and a Golden Retriever. As the campaign manager explains, focus groups want their politicians to be Authentic. So Marty is completely re-tailored in order to achieve Authenticity. And it works too because I don't know, Americans (or at least the majority of them) tend to view eccentricities of character (i.e. what makes a person an individual) as phony fakery. 

And also notice how little attention is paid to actual issues during the debates. Supposedly Cam Brady is a Democrat and Marty Huggins is a Republican but you wouldn’t hear anything about either party’s platform in this movie. All the attacks and defenses are about personal foibles, suspicious alliances with Communism and Al Qaeda, and which one supports the troops or loves Jesus more. This seems less of the movie actually being ignorant of the issues and more as deliberate satire of actual politics. In one scene an intern brings up the idea of running an advertisement about how multi-national corporations get tax credits for outsourcing American jobs to other countries. Cam Brady yells the intern out of the room and decides to put out a sex-tape instead. Cam Brady is a Democrat keep in mind, but that is beside or may just be the point. The point might be that both parties should logically be against tax breaks for corporations who fire American workers, but neither candidate has any plans to change it or even talk about it because well, they have a better chance of winning the election by focusing on trivial bullshit. As for the Motch brothers, they don’t care at all whether they help elect a Democrat or a Republican just as long as the people they put in power remember who put them there.

Is this satire relevant? Take our current presidential campaign. Why should I know that Mitt Romney once put his dogs on the roof of his car for a road trip, or that he has a car elevator, or his opinion of the London Olympics, or that he beat up a gay kid in high school? There is no reason to know these things. None of it matters when it comes to actually running a country. Hell, you know how little personal morals matters to being an effective politician. Lyndon Johnson boned every woman he could get his hands on. He also happened to be one of the best senator majority leaders this country ever had. Shit, lots of it, was actually accomplished in Congress when he was in charge. As Cam Brady states during his Capra-esque moment of preposterous humanity at the end of “The Campaign,” being a great politician and being a great congressman are two entirely different things.

"The Campaign," is director Jay Roach's second great political movie of the year. (The first was HBO’s “Game Change,” about the vice presidential pick of Sarah Palin.) One is a fictional comedy and the other is a historical drama but the theme is the same, the idiotic way that we as a people tend to choose our leaders. The brilliant thing about “Game Change” was not that it bashed Sarah Palin. It was brilliant because it explained quite clearly why Sarah Palin was a choice that made sense and for a couple weeks looked like a home run. I figure we got lucky that Obama seems to have a brain, because quite frankly, we elected him because he looked nice and gave great speeches. That seems to be the most important ingredient nowadays and everything else is frosting. 

If I had a suggestion to the American people it would be to ignore national politics and the national media that covers it in general. Local politics are far more important. Those people actually affect the day-to-day lives of citizens. They are the ones that make the zoning decisions, administer the schools, pick up the garbage, and provide police and fire services among many many other things. What’s more, these are people you can actually influence. One, because your vote has much more power on the local level than on the federal level and two, nobody else gives a shit.