282. Election (1999)

Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Matthew Broderick, Chris Klein

Director: Alexander Payne

Running Time: 103 mins

Election is an American film about a high school election, and a teacher who realises that he must do everything to prevent a goody-goody straight A student from achieving her dream of becoming student president, however a few things go wrong along the way…

I thought that this was a very clever film. I really enjoyed the story, as it was very original in my opinion, and although this may not have been the most hilarious comedy ever, I thought it was very enjoyable to watch.

I was especially pleased by the way that the story of this film poked fun at both how ridiculous the concept of high school politics is, as well as all of the scandalous goings-on in the real world of politics, because you don’t necessarily see that sort of things in a lot of comedies.

Also, this film had some great characterisation. All of the characters were well developed, and had interesting stories to tell, which was enhanced by the way that this story was narrated from four different people’s perspectives from time to time.

The main student in this film, a girl called Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon), however, was possibly one of the most irritating characters I have ever encountered in a film, as the way she acted as the goody-goody, “when I grow up, my resumé will be perfect, and I will rule the world because I was once chosen to be a meaningless president at school.” (So be warned…)

Overall, I’ll give this a 7.8 because it was a good original film, with an interesting and enjoyable story, filled with great characters, even though it wasn’t too hilarious, and quite irritating.