My fellow Americans.
I’d like to talk to you today about a major drain on our nation’s strategic comedy reserve. It’s a Will Ferrell-Zach Galifianakis movie called “The Campaign.”
Friends, I’m going to explain to you why this movie is single-handedly causing a major rise in our mirth deficit. It’s so bad, I’m declaring a laugh emergency.
I’m asking you to join with me in the patriotic act of shopping. To counteract the chuckle-cidal effects of “The Campaign,” I need you to go straight to Best Buy and get a copy of “21 Jump Street” or “Knocked Up.”
Put it this way: Jimmy Carter was funnier than this movie.
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“The Campaign” is a one-joke dumb-bumpkin flick about a Democratic congressman, played by Ferrell, who is in the race of his life against a Republican nobody with a bushy mustache played by Galifianakis.
These two yo-yos spend the entire movie doing the dumbest stuff you can imagine. Ferrell punches a baby. Accidentally. Because he’s trying to punch Galif — excuse me, I’ll just call him Zach — because he’s trying to punch Zach in full view of dozens of reporters.
Ferrell, who plays a guy called Cam Brady, seduces his rival’s wife. Then makes a sex tape. Then makes a campaign commercial out of it. He tries to recite the Lord’s Prayer, saying, “Give us this day our daily pizza.” He campaigns at a snake-handling church. Gets bitten.
Snake-handling? Really? Is that what Hollywood thinks goes on in today’s South? More like watching “Talladega Nights” on video. Because that movie had some affection to it. Wasn’t just smug cheap shots.
Zach plays Marty Huggins. His idea of comedy is to talk in a silly high-pitched voice. And to wear a big mustache. For dinner, he and his wife gorge on Twinkies and Twizzlers. At a synagogue, he says things like “This is the first time I’ve ever worn a Yamaha.”
Even Joe Biden is not that dumb.
The congressman — he’s a Democrat, remember, but because he’s from the South, that means “scary conservative freak” — says his campaign is “about America, Jesus and freedom.” This is a laugh line because in the 310 area code, these concepts are equally high up on the crackpot scale.
If he were from Santa Monica, I guess he’d be saying much more normal things. Like, “It’s about feng shui, driving a Prius to your Learjet and Kabbalah.”
These Hollywood types just don’t get it. Somebody needs to clean up that mess out there, am I right? Except nobody’s in Hollywood anymore. This movie was shot in Louisiana to take advantage of local tax subsidies. Which have been proven to cost states more than they bring in, due to practically all the skilled jobs being taken by nonlocal workers.
That’s right. The Bayou is subsidizing the Beverly Hillbullies. L.A. is outsourcing to LA.
Now that’s funny. But get this: The movie is kind of about outsourcing. When it isn’t being unfunny about what brain-dead rubes Southerners are, it’s being unfunny about NAFTA. About how trade is this bad thing promoted by evil, twisted billionaires played by Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow.
You know those rich Koch brothers? The ones who did all that evil stuff like giving $100 million to Lincoln Center for ballet? The screenwriters want us to think of them. Except they’re calling them the “Motch brothers.”
They really earned their million-dollar paychecks with that one. I didn’t know “Motch” was even a name. According to this movie, thanks to the “Motches,” if the Chinese ever bought land in North Carolina, they could apply Chinese wages. Fifty cents an hour. Not sure that’s how minimum-wage laws work, fellas. You might want to hire some look-stuff-up guys next time. I seem to remember a 1980s comedy about a big business scam that showed signs of actual research into the way markets work. Can’t remember the name of it. Maybe Dan Aykroyd does.
My friends, I’ve seen some terrible things. I’ve seen Ted Kennedy shirtless in the Senate sauna. I’ve seen Al Gore rust over in a light summer rain. I’ve seen Hillary Clinton cripple a defenseless tiger shark with a single bite.
I have never seen anything as terrible as this Will Ferrell movie. Since the last Will Ferrell movie, “Casa de Mi Padre.”