July 4 was slow, hot, and rather unscheduled, so upon impulse I changed the feel by going to a matinee movie in a real movie theater, for the first time since early spring. While most screens remain closed here and nationally, several theaters have reopened in the Milwaukee area, showing a mix of new releases (there are relatively few of those, because many release dates were postponed) and great oldies.
A few weeks ago my wife and I went to a pop-up drive-in, several of which have, well, popped up around here. We watched a social comedy on a giant LCD screen from our car in a parking lot, windows up for social distance from all the other motorists doing the same. That was nice, if a bit odd.
By comparison being inside a traditional theater was a real treat. I hadn't realized how much I missed it. And the theater in suburban Milwaukee was special -- not a modern, big-box multiplex but an old-fashioned, main-street movie palace: Whitefish Bay’s Fox Bay Cinema Grill, a three-screen main-street standalone complete with giant marquee.
The pop-up drive-ins around Milwaukee are selling tickets by the carload for a flat rate of up to $36. The film I was about to see is available for online demand at $20, but I paid only $6.50 at this carefully social-distanced theater. By the time the coming attractions were underway the audience including me totaled six. We were all very well-spaced in a theater that seats hundreds. I quickly went soft on a couple of bottles of Miller, and tucked myself into my swivel chair.
The Fox Bay’s schedule offered oldies including "The Matrix," "Psycho," "The Birds" or "Batman Begins." I salivated especially over the two Hitchcock thrillers -- it's been decades since I saw any of these greats on a big screen. But I chose the new release, "Irresistible," a smallish, well-crafted political satire written and directed by former "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart. Good move, because good movie.
So far I'm part of an elite that has seen “Irresistible.” In its first week it played at 238 theaters nationwide grossing $100,000, plus as yet un-tabulated, on-demand rental sales. Ordinarily that theater gross would define a flop, but in the coronaviral environment this movie is a top ten flick, as it likely would have been without the pandemic’s interference.
Although well made with a solid cast including Steve Carell, Chris Cooper, and Rose Byrne, Stewart's opus has received mostly lukewarm reviews. I found it engaging, and not just because of its localized (for me) plot:
A top Democratic Party campaign consultant from D.C. (Carell) decides to test possible new strategies in rural Republican communities. He picks Deerlaken (that's pronounced Deer Lock-in, a polyglot confection meaning "Deer Lake" when fully translated; however, “laken” also has another meaning in urban slang, which gives away part of the plot, so look it up yourself).
The fictional town in the movie is a Wisconsin farm community of 5,000 that lost a military base as its major employer and has fallen on hard economic times. Our protagonist finds a well-spoken dairy farmer and former Marine Corps officer (Cooper), and talks him into running against the incumbent, a good-old-boy mayor. When a top Republican Party strategist (Byrne) notices what her Democratic rival is up to, she shows up in town with a full team ready to back the GOP incumbent. Dirty tricks and hilarity ensue.
But the film is more than just summer confection. While entertaining us, it also transmits in an economy of words and pictures a vivid understanding of just how screwed up American democracy has become, thanks to big bucks, super PACs, billionaires with idle whims, over-organized campaign bureaucracies and more.
As a small-town Wisconsin native who attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison and worked most of my career in Milwaukee, I quickly noticed that Stewart had done his homework on Wisconsin culture, politics, and social dynamics. The story is not just one-offs about cheese curds or red necks, although those show up. It's a human-interest tale, a story concerning what makes community, and a parable about a country that's uncomfortably close to reality.
For his research, which included scouting locations, Stewart reportedly interviewed Katharine Cramer, a UW-Madison professor who studied the political makeup of the state in her recent book, "The Politics of Resentment." In another non-fiction book about Wisconsin published several years ago, I and my co-author Avi Lank also cited Cramer's scholarly work for its important insights. How did we as a nation get so tribalized and divided, and why does that division only seem to worsen? "Irresistible" provides some, though not all, of the answers.
Plaudits to Stewart for coming to Wisconsin (where much of the movie was filmed) and loading up with real facts before choosing locations and shooting his script.
"Irresistible" is funny and raunchy in places but also is rewarding and mature — just like the characters who represent real people Stewart seeks to show us. By the time the credits roll (which they try to do several times before the characters interrupt), Stewart has nailed the look, feel, and sentiments of rural Wisconsin. They are simultaneously more complex and more basic than many observers might notice:
Stay together. Survive. Be nice. Be ethical. Take some risks. Keep it real. Leave the campsite (or the small farm town with boarded up storefronts) nicer than you found it. Mix and match the above as necessary, because ideal choices are rare.
Meanwhile, the two self-air-dropped political combatants -- underlying personality strengths and good intentions not withstanding -- get taken down a peg. That's noteworthy because Stewart, a progressive in real life, is wise enough to know that while Democratic politics generally are more responsible than the Republican alternatives, both parties are captive to big-money distortion. Earnest attempts to break out of this habit
Stewart does all this playfully and yet with immense respect, often tipping his hat toward the fictional locals and thus their real-life counterparts. His script and camera do not talk down, although his characters sometimes do on the way to ephiphany.
For a time I was a professional movie critic. I haven't formally reviewed films in decades. But this movie is so good (swiping a joke from Robert Klein), that I had to come back from the dead to tell you about it. "Irresistible" is, besides engaging comedy, an important political story, one of the best such stories that this country's filmmakers ever have told. Think "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," only in reverse. Call it "Mr. Stewart Goes to Wisconsin."