Swing Vote

Starring Kevin Costner, Madeline Carroll, and Kelsey Grammer
Directed by Joshua Michael Stern
Rated PG-13

Now you can count Swing Vote among their ranks.

It isn’t the best of the bunch, but it has a serious subject on its mind, which it jabs softly for a while before moving in with the knockout punch. Its premise is no more fantastical than Dave, in which a presidential impersonator becomes the leader of the free world. Bud (Kevin Costner) is an unemployed single father who gets tanked on Election Day and doesn’t vote. Instead, his civic minded daughter (Madeline Carroll) casts his vote while nobody’s looking.

But the vote doesn’t tally because of a technical glitch. As it happens, that ballot will decide the entire race. So Bud – the last person you want making this decision – is electing the next president himself.

The candidates, Kelsey Grammer and Dennis Hopper (Hopper running for office is a truly scary notion), fly to New Mexico to court his vote, changing their platforms based on the whims of an uneducated drunk. The film’s funniest moments are the tasteless and out-of-place campaign ads used to curry Bud’s favor.

The movie breezes by lightly for a good 20 minutes at the beginning and for roughly another 20 or 30 minutes about an hour in. It is, after all, a comedy. There's less to like about Swing Vote here, because it's a better, smarter film than that. Or at least it shows signs of being smarter in between, when there are still laughs but there's more satirizing both an enterprising two-party political machine hungry for attention and a general malaise among those disconnected from that process, and how these two worlds can't ever speak the same language while their busy speaking their own.

Costner is best in roles like this, where he can be a little rough around the edges. And Swing Vote, which has a much smarter script than the trailers and ads give it credit for, is graced by the skill and charm of the 12-year-old Carroll, who illustrates exactly why grown ups with responsibilities should take that civic duty more seriously.

It will not be uncommon for you to hear comparisons of this film to the Frank Capra classics of the late 1930s and 1940s. Over the years, the meaning of Capraeque has been watered down, and now people think it just means syrupy and sentimental, and shows characters winning despite big odds because that's what gives a movie its happy ending. That's not it, though. In fact, the American Heritage Dictionary defines Capraesque this way:

"Of or evocative of the movies of Frank Capra, often promoting the positive social effects of individual acts of courage."

That description fits Swing Vote, which more than anything, pushes educating yourself and being involved, not just politically but also personally. You may argue that it's not courageous to vote. Really? Then why do tens of millions avoid it like cowards every four years?