While likely trying to maintain as generic a title as possible so as not to arouse too much interest or outrage from anyone actually partaking in the rigged election system (media included), Irresistible might have been better off being called SUPER PACT (yes, a play on SUPER PAC) or A Redder Shade of Blue. Then again, if it had been called anything else, Jon Stewart wouldn’t have been able to conveniently highlight the word “resist” during the credits, throwing caution to the wind with the fact that his script name still has strong ties to both a Jessica Simpson song and album, as well as a 2006 movie of the same name starring Susan Sarandon. And also walking right into such a critical insult as, “Irresistible is anything but.” But, barring this already irking facet, let us dive into some of the less prosaic aspects of the movie, of which there are few.
Following his 2014 directorial debut, Rosewater, Irresistible offers a more expected tone from someone known for turning the incongruities of politics into comedy. Granted, Stewart has taken a more serious tack over the years since The Daily Show first aired (now hosted by Trevor Noah), and he therefore melds (or tries to) the tragicomic into the story of Gary Zimmer (Steve Carrell), a political campaign strategist who has recently suffered the blow of losing Hillary’s campaign to the Orange One as a result of ignoring the idea of encouraging Hill to lavish the Midwest with more attention.
Wielding the vintage video of a fat man being blasted by a cannonball to the stomach, this is the reaction Stewart wields to evoke the collective feeling of the nation on Election Day 2016–or, more specifically, the morning after when the results came in. Determined not to let this career-shattering loss dampen his reputation for turning candidate potential into electable gold, Gary’s attention is directed to a “viral” video (a close look at the views reads “122”–perhaps an oversight in script supervision), featuring an ex-Marine colonel named Jack Hastings (Chris Cooper) ardently defending the rights of immigrants to remain in their small town of Deerlaken in Wisconsin (this ardency is dropped soon after, when xenophobia no longer serves as a topic for plot advancement–not that much of anything does based on the eventual trajectory of the script).
As the year’s well-timed “election movie,” the messaging, by virtue alone of being distributed in part by Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment, is heavy-handed for most of the duration–Hastings’ speech being the beginning of that incessant hammering into our heads about the corruption of the U.S. electoral process–a reflection of the sickness of the nation’s so-called ideals. The hammer turns into a jackknife during the credits when an expert is interviewed by an off-camera Stewart getting him to explain that the nonsequitur twist of the movie could indeed happen, with super PACs known for being able to “raise unlimited sums of money from corporations, unions, associations and individuals, then spend unlimited sums to overtly advocate for or against political candidates.”
The town of Deerlaken just wants a piece of some of those “unlimited sums” for itself, flipping the script on Gary and his kind for only “caring” about the Heartland of America when an election year rolls around and they need to drum up more votes during increasingly close races that reveal the inherent divide (fortified by the media, as Stewart also over the toply points out in the credits section) between the values and ideals of U.S. denizens.
The irony of Stewart’s attempt to eviscerate liberal hauteur by being meta about how condescending Gary is comes in the package of Stewart himself evincing the same patronizing timbre throughout the narrative, which offers a “twist” so out of left field and slapdashedly written that it serves as the final insult to us for giving ourselves for almost a full two hours to the narrative (all the while also wondering what the purpose of Rose Byrne’s character really is).
Stewart’s efforts at being “clever” and “symbolic” are often clunky, case in point being when Gary first breezes into Deerlaken in a strategically “non-baller” (in his mind) vehicle listening to a radio show about Rodgers and Hammerstein, specifically referencing their musical, Pipe Dream. The radio host discusses the next song, “Everybody’s Got A Home But Me,” sung by Suzy, the prostitute who has just arrived in town. In this scenario, obviously, Gary is that prostitute. And Stewart does succeed in repeatedly interweaving just how instrumental shaking one’s ass for the cold hard cash is in every election in the U.S., no matter how small the scale. So it is that he concludes his movie with the title card over an image of dem billz being printed: “Money lived happily ever after…reveling in its outsized influence over American politics.” He might have just tweeted that instead of writing an entire screenplay centered around the “premise.” Of course, those in the Midwest that Gary looks down on for most of the film for their lack of “city slicker” intelligence might actually get “a kick” out of it–or so Stewart seems to believe.
