Swing Vote: Critic Reviews

By the time Bud sincerely apprehends his citizen responsibilities, Swing Vote has swung irrevocably toward condescension.

One of the most surprising, politically suggestive movies to come out of Hollywood this year.

But away from the cutesy stuff there are some surprisingly sharp digs at the political process.

One minute you're laughing at its sendup of the political process, and the next you're stricken by the sorry state of the sweet and brainy protagonist's family.

The ridiculous setup is just the skeleton for something more substantial; the flesh of the movie is made of the funny, tender interactions between Bud and his daughter, Molly.

It's 2008. Why are we still microwaving Frank Capra's old casseroles? The movie turns racism, class woes, and social issues into jokes instead of engaging them with intelligence, wit, or a whiff of drama.

The lightweight Swing Vote is a good-ol'-boy civics lesson that's too scattered to achieve its predictable goals.

The movie is a genial comedy, but it has significant undertones.

Swing Vote lopes along and is best taken as a tale of a father and a daughter coming through a rough patch to a better place, rather than anything to do with real-world politics.

The undertones of Frank Capra come bubbling to the surface in a smarmy finale complete with French horn and bags of mail from the common folk.

A disarming political satire perfectly calibrated to the national mood and to its revitalized star.

Swing Vote captures the spirit of an election year when many once-apathetic Americans are keenly interested in the outcome. We have met the enemy and he is us. But so is the hero.

Swing Vote is an amiable lug of a movie, part public service announcement, part political satire and part good-old-boy comedy with a spritz of sentiment hanging over the entire enterprise.

After years of misfires, Kevin Costner has hit upon a strategy to make himself likable in a movie: by playing someone completely unlikable.

Funny, animated, appealing in an aw-shucks sort of way, the star milks maximum impact from a unique body language that is refreshingly knock-kneed and bow-legged at the same time.

Graced with a gently cynical spirit and more brains than its average-Joe protagonist, Swing Vote applies a pleasing Frank Capra-esque glaze to the fanciful story of a blue-collar American whose vote ends up being the only one that counts.

This would-be civics lesson is such an appalling view of American democracy that it could be used as a recruiting film by al Qaeda.

Swing Vote nicely boils down America's political malaise to one man's awakening from a Budweiser stupor and seeing the only thing that matters when you don't pay attention and exercise the franchise on Election Day: You're letting your kid down.

As often happens with politics, even as Swing Vote entertains, it leaves us feeling like we've been subjected to some slick manipulation and worse, left with promises unfulfilled.

As in so many essentially childish movies, it's an actual child who's always the smartest pants in the room.

Stern and his lead actor do manage to pull it all together at the end.

Swing Vote isn't exactly a toothless political satire. It's something worse: a satire with dentures.

Swing Vote is more subtle and insightful than the dumbed-down comedy the marketing campaign would have us believe it to be.

American democracy has rarely looked worse than in this unfunny and undramatic comedy-drama.

Swing Vote is guilty of being the same thing that so many political candidates accuse each other of being: a flip-flopper.