Irresistible (Jon Stewart, 2020)

[domino harvey]

Steve Carell, Chris Cooper, and Rose Byrne will star in an election-themed comedy written and directed by Jon Stewart

[mfunk9786]

Ironic title!

[Hopscotch]

Ironic title!

Odd misspelling of "Insufferable."

[knives]

I thought his first movie was okay and it will be fun to see what he's been thinking of since his retirement.

[spectre]

Honestly, Stewart's first film seemed like such a weird project (the earnestness of its premise, Gael Garcia Bernal playing an Iranian?!?, among other things) that, even though being a fan of his show at the time, I completely avoided it. Maybe this will be a better use of his talents?

[Nasir007]

I haven't seen his first film but I gotta ask on the basis of this one - Does Jon Stewart know how to make a film? This has to be one of the most naive and lame pieces of political satire in decades literally. This is an incredibly dated movie in both content and form - more about that later.

But first the premise. The premise of this film is only revealed in the closing moments as a "twist" and its presentation is not much better than Serenity in the mind-numbing improbability of it. I am not rejecting the premise - the premise CAN work with a good story and screenplay. But in this version, it is absolutely outrageous and insulting. Is this a real movie or a parable?

Onto the other failures of the film -

Content - The film has the earnestness of the 1930s or something. Has he lost so much of an edge since when he quit television? I think politics today is inescapably cynical, visceral and personal and Stewart's version of politics is extremely tame - nothing more than a mild disagreement.

Form - There are two operating schools of political satire you could say with regards to form - the SNL model or the Iannucci model - seen in In the Loop and Veep. The former is broad caricature of current events and the latter is your pseudo doc approach of mile-a-minute repartee and dense conflicting agendas colliding. The latter approach also represents modern media and in fact media consumption from audiences. The news cycle has been reduced to a 24 minute news cycle if not a 24 second news cycle. News explodes past us at the speed of light with literally 100s of stories breaking in different forms at different speeds at different times with different emphasis in different places and different channels. This is always how politics will be in the modern world unless there is one singular event like say a SCOTUS confirmation or impeachment or a global pandemic etc. If politics is this way, you would think political satire should emulate that to have some semblance of realism.

Not here. This feels like an incredibly slow movie that I think takes 35 mins to even set up a conflict. This movie is simply behind the times in both content and form. Also is it the budget or what but the movie is so sparse in incident and locations, it feels like Stewart doesn't really have a full film here. This whole story would have been covered by SNL in a single skit or cold open or worse Veep would have dispensed with it in a couple of lines. There simply isn't much there there.

For a movie about dueling political campaigns, there is not even the usual trappings. No debates, no rallies, no media interviews.

And out of the 3 dominating political forces in the United States - the DNC, the GOP and the main stream media - the most harmful one goes by completely unscathed save for a few lame jokes at the end.

Superficially this is a 'non-partisan' film but I would say scratch the skin and you'd find some blue meat in there. Also characterized by highlighting the word Resist in the title - which I think was the only reason to choose the title because otherwise really - why is this film called irresistible?

Overall, this is a dumb, lame, dated movie that you have to wonder was green-lit as a theatrical release. There is none of the cynicism or the existential ache which occupies today's politics. This is a political satire made for your grandparents.

[whaleallright]

Much as the nonstop panic attack that is the Trump presidency has led many Americans to memory-hole the grotesque crimes of the Bush administration, I think many folks look back on Jon Stewart's Daily Show years with rose-tinted glasses. He did some good, but was also responsible for some of the most toothless, inane "satire" of the era. So the apparent lameness of this film—which I can't confirm, having seen only the toweringly lame preview—shouldn't come as too big a surprise. (It probably doesn't help that Stewart is a very rich person, a condition known to produce the symptom of terminal centrism.)

[domino harvey]

Inspired this thoughtful critique on the Blu-ray.com listing

Well, I'm not putting any money in the pockets of person who bails out thugs. Steve can go to hell.