Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
A high school teacher meets his match in an over-arching student politician.
Election is a razor-sharp dark comedy satire that punches well above its weight. Perrotta's source material is brilliantly adapted by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, giving the plot layers of moral complexity and irony that reward repeated viewing. Reese Witherspoon's Tracy Flick is one of cinema's great comic creations — manic, terrifying, and oddly sympathetic — while Matthew Broderick delivers a career-best performance as the self-deceiving teacher. The film's novelty lies in its wickedly cynical yet compassionate dissection of American ambition and democratic ritual, filtered through Payne's distinctively sardonic Midwestern lens. The multiple-narrator structure and its unreliable perspectives give it a unique texture. Cinematography is solid but functional rather than inspired. The ending, while satisfying and thematically complete, is somewhat conventional in its ironic comeuppance structure, keeping it from true distinction.