It just does it with a plucky attitude.Įlection is streaming on Stan.
Who gets to decide who gets to rule? Why should anyone have more say than anyone else? This biting black comedy is a microcosm of the questions that still plague institutions of power and those subjected to its inequities. While you’re laughing at those silly mechanical seatbelts that seem to be in every car in Omaha, or at Klein’s voiceover delivery of rich kid Paul’s existential crisis, Election will confront you with serious ideas about political systems, predatory behaviour and entitlement. His original idea for that 1998 novel, Perrotta. Hell, he hadn’t even planned on Tracy being the central player in Election. On that note, Witherspoon is set to reprise the role again in an Election sequel directed by Payne, which will follow the adult Tracy Flick as she battles to become the principal of a suburban high school. Tom Perrotta never intended to write another book about Tracy Flick. When Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016, she was compared to Tracy Flick, all grown up. Rewatching Election now, it’s hard to ignore how those judgments about female ambition have played out in real life. It’s only later when Jim is revealed to be flawed, manipulative and a love rat that you are forced to ask yourself why you saw Tracy as the antagonist.
TRACY FLICK FOR PRESIDENT MOVIE
When you’re laughing at Tracy, Payne’s movie grounds you in Jim’s perspective.
Why do we find their unabashed aspirations so grating? Why do we roll our eyes at the person – and it’s always the same person – who volunteers every year to organise the charity morning teas? Especially if they’re a woman? Still, it reveals a lot about our own neuroses and complexes that we pour scorn on ambitious souls like her. Tracy is not blameless – she rails against “subversive elements”, she lies and stands in judgment of others. The woman candidate, though, is rarerand even more fraught. It remains an indelible image in cinema: Tracy, in that moment, is every person you’ve ever met that struck you as just a little too ambitious, just a little too sanctimonious and just a little too annoying. From Mackenzie Allen to Selina Meyer, the woman president has long been a feature of American entertainment. When she surreptitiously discovers she won the election, the sight of her ecstatic, contorted face is forever captured and amplified in freeze frame. There was partisanship and sex scandals, but US politics still managed to amuse as well as enrage, when compared with the terrifying hellscape it morphed into.Īt the heart of the film is Tracy, the kind of earnest try-hard you just want to see taken down a notch, or three. Like Wag the Dog and Primary Colors, it tapped into the now almost-quaint Clintonian era of the 1990s. We suspect, however, that things won’t run especially smoothly for her!Īlexander Payne, who co-wrote and directed Election, is back for Tracy Flick Can’t Win, with co-writer Jim Taylor.The election campaign unfolds in hilarious and bizarre beats – including a wildly funny scene involving a bee sting – and culminates in a vote-stealing scandal that is both shocking and not shocking at the same time.Įlection masquerades as a familiar high school comedy, but it is astute and keenly observed. As assistant principal at a public high school in New Jersey, she has her sights firmly set on the top job when her boss announces plans to retire. The film, adapted from Tom Perrotta's follow-up book from earlier this year, focuses on Tracy, who is now in her 40s. Now, the sequel will revisit Tracy Flick in adulthood, as she continues with her bid to be at the top of the tree, this time in her work life. It has gone on to be regarded as something of a classic. Whilst the movie didn’t make a massive splash at the box office, it was critically-acclaimed upon its release and received an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, while Witherspoon was nominated for a Best Actress at the Golden Globes. The original film featured the Legally Blonde star as a precocious schoolgirl whose campaign to become school president was subject to an attempted sabotage by her social studies teacher, played by Matthew Broderick. Reese Witherspoon is set to reprise one her most legendary roles, in new film Tracy Flick Can’t Win, which is a sequel to 1999’s acclaimed political comedy, Election.
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