Election

The teenage movie of the week is Election. Unlike the steady stream of recent high school inspired sludge with plots that always culminate at the senior prom (Never Been Kissed, She’s All That, 10 Things I Hate About You), this dark comedy is a satirical look at student government elections. Holy intelligentsia, Batman!

Even more surprising: Election is co-produced by MTV. The cable network that parents love to hate has come a long way since "Beavis and Butt-Head."

I’ll be right up front. Election earns its R rating with some over the top sexual hanky panky, drug use, and vulgarity. That’s unfortunate, because the extracurricular activity might limit its audience to adults 17 years-old and over. Too bad, because I think young people enjoy smart film making.

The movie takes place at Carver High School in suburban Omaha, Nebraska. We follow the downward slide of dedicated U.S. history and civics teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick).

Mr. McAllister meddles in the student council election. He is bent on seeing that an overachieving student, Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon), does not win the president’s race. It seems that Mr. McAllister has not forgotten Tracy’s earlier sexual dalliances with his colleague, a math teacher who was fired when the relationship was exposed.

McAllister talks an injured football player, Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) into running against Tracy. Compounding matters, Paul’s younger sister (Jessica Campbell) jumps into the race for reasons best left out of this column. Tracy, with her vengeful, beady little eyes, smells a rat. The race is on.

Being a veteran of college student government politics, the social and political commentary of this film is on target with the precision of a laser guided missile. If you can overlook the sexual innuendo, one can extrapolateits message to office politics and society at large.

As I sat there, an alternate title came to mind: "Monica Lewinsky...The Formative Years."