#33: Election (1999)

I absolutely love Alexander Payne's films, and this movie is right in his wheelhouse. It's about regular people at a Midwestern small town high school. The people are odd but interesting, disturbing but fun. All of the characters feel like people I know in real life. The story itself is creepily hilarious. The relationship between teachers and students is often a little weird. Tracy Flick is the kind of character you'll swear you knew in high school. I probably knew her troubled government teacher, Mr. McAllister, too. I just didn't know that I knew him. The movie is a satire about an election for student government with Tracy running for president. It's not a teen movie though. We see Tracy mostly through the eyes of Mr. McAllister, who has had more than enough of her manipulative ways and recruits the proverbial popular dimwit jock to run against her in an attempt to stop her from winning. What is Tracy Flick's platform? That she should win simply because she's the school's self-appointed winner. When the jock's anarchist lesbian sister jumps into the race in order to piss off the girl who rejected her (her brother's campaign manager), we're really off to the races. Ultimately, this is a parable about elections in general - in which the voters have to choose from among the kinds of people who have been running for office ever since high school.