'Swing Vote'

Rating:

BY RAFER GUZMÁN | rafer.guzman@newsday.com

August 1, 2008

PLOT An average Joe becomes the single deciding vote of a presidential election.

CAST Kevin Costner, Kelsey Grammer, Dennis Hopper, Madeline Carroll

LENGTH 2:07

PLAYING AT Area theaters. See showtimes

BOTTOM LINE A gentle but effective political satire with a laudable message: Your vote really does count.

With a very real presidential election on the horizon, the time is right for an incisive satire of the craven candidates, special interests and self-serving media that make up America's deeply flawed political system. " Swing Vote" (PG-13) is not that movie - it has more heart than teeth - but it's a clever summer comedy that offers more than easy laughs. And its obligatory moral, about civic duty, no less, might actually do this country some good.

The premise is the logical extreme of the 2000 election, which came down to a few hundred votes - this time it's down to a single citizen. Bud Johnson (Kevin Costner) is a below-average Joe who holds his liquor better than his jobs; he's also father to Molly (Madeline Carroll), a precocious, civic-minded 12-year-old. On election day, she insists that her normally apolitical dad visit a polling place. "Screw this up and I'm leaving you," she warns. Of course, he does (and she doesn't).

Bud then has 10 days to recast his ballot, and in the meantime becomes a one-man voting bloc, pandered to by both the Republican incumbent (Kelsey Grammer, playing a kinder, goofier version of our current leader) and the Democratic contender (a slightly miscast Dennis Hopper). Their campaign managers ( Stanley Tucci and Nathan Lane, respectively) quickly enter new realms of cynicism, pushing the candidates to flip and flop for Bud's approval. "Swing Vote" hits the bipartisan bull's-eye with several hilarious campaign commercials, including a Republican salute to gay marriage and a Democratic plea to end abortion.

Smartly written by Jason Richman and Joshua Michael Stern (who also directed), "Swing Vote" isn't a realistic film - it veers off course with a subplot involving Molly's absent mother - but it often has the ring of truth. Costner's scruffy, goofy, likable Bud seems to embody the entire voting citizenry: well-intentioned but woefully ill-informed. At one point, Molly loses patience with his apathy and ignorance, screaming, "You're ruining America!" But aren't we all?