(Newser)
– Steve Carrell plays a Democratic political consultant in hopes of recruiting a widowed farmer and retired marine to run for office in rural Wisconsin after the 2016 election in Jon Stewart’s new political satire Irresistible. But the second film by the writer and director is not as well received as the first (2014 Water of roses), even with dear Carrell in tow. One reviewer says the movie, rated 41% on Rotten Tomatoes, appears to have been made by someone “who has just become politically aware.” And the successes keep coming:
- It’s a “moderately smart comedy” in which Rose Byrne “is especially funny as a free-minded woman who will lie about anything,” writes Chris Hewitt in the Minneapolis Starstand. Still, “Irresistible it ends up being anything but, “Hewitt notes,” nothing Byrne says over the course of 100 minutes is half as much fun as a 30-minute routine for the dearly departed. Veep“And the movie” seems to be patronizing, particularly about small towns. “
- I could “retroactively appreciate Stewart’s version of wit, which can be summed up as, ‘Well, it’s course to suck because everything stinks “.” But that’s no justification for this movie, which “fades into tonal limbo and stays there,” writes Matt Zoller Seitz at RogerEbert.com. In fact, “it plays like it was made by a young person who just became politically aware a few months ago.” It gives 1.5 stars.
- Jeannette Catsoulis compares the film to “a stale corn chip trampled on the carpet of the party convention.” “Trafficking with the elitism that it purports to deplore, Irresistible presents a homemade Central American cliche “with a” patronizing tone [that] sometimes it can be worrying, “even” his thesis may be too unsophisticated for our increasingly traumatic times, “writes Catsoulis in the New York Times.
- There are shots fired at Democrats and Republicans alike, but “Irresistible It can only face Trumpism as a failure of the left rather than as an active option in itself, racism reduced to a by-product of economic anxiety, “suggesting that Stewart is” woefully ill-prepared to deal with our tumultuous present. ” Alison Willmore writes in Vulture, also finding something missing from Carrell’s acting, but acknowledging that “it’s impossible to do something fun when you’re not sure what the key point is.”
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