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Movie Review: Irresistible

Mike Tyrkus

Sprung from the fertile mind of comedian Jon Stewart, who wrote and directed the film, Irresistible tells the story of Democratic political consultant, Gary Zimmer (Steve Carell), who signs on to help a retired Marine colonel run for mayor of a small town in Wisconsin.

Stewart, who was so brilliant skewering politicians during his tenure as host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, and did such a fine job with his previous directorial effort, 2014’s Rosewater, feels slightly overwhelmed by the enormity of the issues at hand here. The concise, biting commentary that Stewart excels at is present at times here, but it is shrouded in excess that causes the central message and tone to be muddled and even completely lost at some points in the film.

Steve Carell in “Irresistible.” © 2020 – Focus Features

Carell does his best to keep things on track through his performance as the affable Gary, but there’s not too much he can do when the plot moves nowhere and the motivation of the entire enterprise, revealed in the last few moments of the film, almost completely negates the message and intent of the preceding narrative events. Chris Cooper is perfectly cast as the likable everyman Jack Hastings who appears to be the perfect Democratic candidate when he delivers and impassioned speech at a local town hall meeting which causes Carell’s Gary to seek him out as a potential candidate. Other characters however, are introduced and given one or two brief moments before being forgotten while others as far more criminally underused, such as Faith Brewster, Gary’s rival on the Republican side of the aisle, played exquisitely by Rose Byrne, who rarely has anything tangible to do other than provide something other than a computer screen or phone for Gary to interact with while moving the plot slowly forward. Similarly, Mackenzie Davis is less underused as Jack’s daughter Diana, than she is misrepresented and ultimately wasted. Other ancillary characters meet a similar fate as the film introduces far more than it can never possibly devote the time to develop within its given running time.

In the end, Irresistible is a failure in that it often shows the promise of becoming a biting satire of the election process, but it far too often finds itself lost in a morass of self-aware social critiques and overt political diatribes espousing a point of view that is probably already shared by anyone seeking it out in the first place.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com
An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

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