Irresistible (2020)
Directed by Jon Stewart
A Democratic political consultant helps a retired Marine colonel run for mayor in a small, conservative Wisconsin town.
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What critics compared Irresistible to
It’s at least commendable that “Irresistible” did not try to completely copy the “love/hate/we know they’re going to get together” relationship of political opposites that was on display in director Ron Underwood’s critically panned 1994 comedy flop “Speechless.”
Speechless (1994) used a similar premise as background for a sappy romance between Michael Keaton and Geena Davis.
A love-hate rivalry between Carell and Rose Byrne’s Republican opposite is only fitfully funny and tonally from a different movie (think 1994’s Speechless ), while the initial (Frank) Capra-corn/ Doc Hollywood /Ealing Comedy fish-out-of-water shitck jars, rather than charms.
(There are also meretricious variations on Bill Forsyth’s “Local Hero” (1983), which admirers of that masterpiece may well rue.)
What follows is a broad-strokes comedy drama pitched somewhere between the satire of Barry Levinson’s Wag the Dog and the fish-out-of-water charm of Bill Forsyth’s Local Hero .
And we return to the joke a couple of times during the film, maybe the nearest indication of the kind of humor—let’s look in the direction of Bill Forsyth and Local Hero—that Stewart sometimes aims for with this political satire.
I appreciated “Irresistible” for not always choosing the most obvious direction, like having Gary go all “Local Hero” and fall in love with the backward ways (to jet-setters like him) of Wisconsin.