Irresistible

Screenwriting guru Christopher Vogler believes that every story is a contract between the writer and the audience. As much as I admire Jon Stewart for many things, I think he violated that contract in this. There are deceivers in the movie, but the filmmakers are also deceivers. When a character deceives another character, that can be dramatic and interesting. But when the filmmakers deceive and withhold information from the audience it can be frustrating and unfulfilling. Some people like to have the rug pulled out from them in a movie. But I only like it if it feels like the filmmakers earned the right. Here, they didn’t, which is why at the end there are many sequences with many characters EXPLAINING what transpired in the movie. Bits of this are funny, and successfully take the piss out of US elections. Portions of this are also meant to send-up the “city slicker in the small town with the rubes” trope, à la Doc Hollywood. Which is okay, I guess. But the entire premise is a smoke screen, and at the end, it just elicits a shrug.