Nicholas D’Agosto | Through the Shattered Lens

Last year, when I did my series of Back to School reviews, it somehow slipped my mind to review Alexander Payne’s 1999 comedy, Election. Don’t ask me how I managed to do that. Election, after all, is one of the greatest high school films ever made. Not only does it feature Reese Witherspoon’s best performance (or, at least, it was her best performance up until the release of Wild) but it also features Ferris Bueller himself, Matthew Broderick, as the type of teacher who regularly inspired Ferris to skip school. Trust me — when I realized that I had managed to review Cavegirl while somehow ignoring Election, I was mortified.

But then, a few months later, I decided to do Shattered Politics and review 94 films about politics and politicians. And it occurred to me that Election may have been a high school film but it was also a political satire. Add to that, it’s totally plausible that Reese Witherspoon’s Tracy Flick will someday end up running for President.

That certainly seems to be the concern of Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) in Election. When he learns that Tracy is planning on running for student body president, Jim is concerned. Tracy is an overachiever. Tracy is the type of student who always raises her hand in class and who always has the right answer. Tracy is the type of student that tends to drive other students crazy. As Jim puts it, if Tracy is elected Student Body President, who knows where it will end?

Of course. Jim has other reasons for disliking Tracy. Earlier in the year, for instance, Tracy was seduced by Jim’s fellow teacher and best friend, Dave Novotny (Mark Harelik). When Tracy’s mother (played by Colleen Camp) discovered the affair, Dave was forced to retire and was subsequently divorced. When Tracy mentions that if she’s elected President, that means she and Jim will be working closely together, Jim panics. Jim thinks that Tracy will try to seduce him and he knows that he would be too weak to resist. Instead, Jim would rather have an affair Dave’s ex-wife (Delaney Driscoll) while trying unsuccessfully to get his own wife (Molly Hagan) pregnant.

So, of course, Jim decides to recruit Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) to run against her. Paul is a simple-minded but sweet-natured jock who, as the result of breaking his leg while skiing, has become something of a school martyr. As soon as Paul announces that he’s running, his cynical little sister Tammy (Jessica Campbell) also announces that she’s running, despite the fact that she hates school and thinks that idea of student government is a joke. Tammy’s main motivation is that her ex-girlfriend, Lisa (Frankie Ingrassia) has announced that she was just “experimenting” and is now dating Paul and managing his campaign.

Got all that?

As the campaign plays out, Jim is panicked to discover that, while Paul may be popular, he’s also amazingly inarticulate and really doesn’t seem to care whether he wins or not. Meanwhile, Tammy announces that her first action as president will be to destroy the student government. However, Jim then has reason to believe that Tracy destroyed some campaign signs (mostly because Tracy did) and he comes up with a plan to get her disqualified from the ballot.

Except, of course, it’s not that easy to get rid of Tracy Flick…

One of the things that always amuses me about TV shows set in high school is that they almost always feature an absurdly powerful student council. Remember that episode of Boy Meets World where Topanga is elected president because she gives a speech about how somebody has to do something about the mold in the cafeteria? That’s the fantasy view of the student council. The reality is that, when I was in high school, the student council was something that, whenever we remembered that it actually existed, we all laughed about.

(One of the great things about Degrassi is that it’s one of the few teen shows to acknowledge that the student council has no power. Considering that the current President of the Degrassi Student Council is Drew Torres, that’s probably for the best.)

But here’s the thing — we all knew someone like Tracy Flick. We all knew someone who took things like the student council very seriously and who would always get very angry whenever the rest of us showed less reverence for school institutions. And, in retrospect, you almost have to feel sorry for her because what she never understood was that devotion to the rules and hard work really don’t mean much in either high school or college. The genius of Reese Witherspoon’s performance is that she brings to life a character that we all know and then, at the same time, makes her a unique human being. In the role of Tracy, Witherspoon allows us to understand what motivated the girls who always used to get on our nerves.

And then, of course, there’s Matthew Broderick. Broderick starts out as a glibly self-confident character just to end the film as something of a twisted gargoyle, unshaven because he’s been sleeping in his car and, as the result of a bee sting, a frightfully swollen eye. By the end of the film, Jim has essentially been destroyed by his fear and obsessive hatred of one student. Broderick is not exactly playing a sympathetic character here but it’s still a compelling performance because it confirms everything that I always suspected about all of my teachers — i.e., that they specifically and targeted certain students and that most of them were motivated by jealousy.

Thank you, Election, for letting me know that I was right!

So, earlier today, I saw Final Destination 5 and guess what isn’t half as bad as you might think?

Now, I’m going to assume that if you’re reading this review, then you probably already know what this film is about. Seriously, once a film has reached its fifth installment, you have absolutely no excuse for not knowing what’s going on. Still, just in case you need to be reminded, here’s how this series works. All of the Final Destination films follow the same basic storyline: a group of attractive but generally anonymous people are gathered together for some everyday event like Nascar or a flight to France. Suddenly, there’s some huge disaster that generally involves a lot of things exploding and people dying. However, it turns out that the disaster we just saw was instead the main character’s vision of what’s going to happen. That character freaks out which leads to him and a handful of other people avoiding the disaster. However, by not dying, they’ve managed to tick off Death and soon, our survivors are dying in a variety of ludicrously convoluted ways, the key being that they’re dying in the order that they died in the original vision. (Fortunately, Tony Todd shows up in each film and explains how it all works.) Anyway, in each film, we learn of a different way to cheat death and each film ends with both the final survivors and the audience learning that actually you can’t cheat death. In many ways, the Final Destination series is the perfect reflection of the 21st Century. The same crap keeps happening and, in the end, we’re all doomed regardless.

Final Destination 5 sticks to established formula. This time, the big disaster is a bridge collapse and the twist is that a survivor can fill death’s quota by killing someone else. That’s kind of a neat idea and the film actually has a little bit of clever fun with that at the end. Still, I wish the film had taken the whole idea to its logical, grindhouse extreme and just had all the survivors running around desperately looking for innocent people to murder.

There’s a lot of very legitimate criticisms that one can make about Final Destination 5. Though the supporting cast is well-chosen (especially Miles Fisher — who could be Tom Cruise’s twin brother, seriously, David Koechner and Courtney B. Vance), the main character is played by Nicholas D’Agosto, who gives a performance that is so free of charisma that you have a hard time believing that he was ever alive to begin with. Emma Bell plays D’Agosto’s girlfriend and it is seriously amazing to see how little chemistry the two of them have together. (Then again, this also helps to make the film’s final twist entertaining as opposed to traumatic…) As much as I love to see Tony Todd doing his Tony Todd thing, it’s hard not get impatient with the fact that these characters need to be told that they’re in a Final Destination film.

But let’s be honest — those criticisms may be valid but who cares? This is a Final Destination film and if you’re not willing to consider it on the basis of what it is, then don’t waste your time watching it and bitching about how it’s not The Help. Judged solely on that basis, Final Destination 5 is actually a return to form for the series. The deaths are all nicely done and memorably grotesque and there’s a real nasty twist at the end of the film that basically serves as a reward for all the horror fans who have stuck with the series since the beginning. I wish I could tell you what that twist was but seriously, it’s way too neat for me to spoil it. I’ll just say that I squealed in delight when I saw it.

Finally, this is a 3-D film that was actually made in real 3-D. The 3-D was not tacked on as an afterthought and, as a result, this is rare film that actually uses the 3-D to make the movie better as opposed to just trendier. This is a film where guts spill freely, eyeballs literally pop out of the screen, and it’s all just the perfect definition of good, stupid fun.

(That said, I do have to admit that this film was apparently made specifically to freak me out because, oh my God, it’s like they exploited every single fear that I have. As Arleigh can tell you, I am terrified of two things — heights and drowning. Which means that if you really want to see me scared, just get me thinking about the prospect of plunging several hundred feet into a large body of water. Seriously, just typing that freaks me out. So, of course, what does this film open with? A freaking bridge collapsing. And don’t even get me started on the laser eye surgery…agck! I’ll just stay blind as a bat, thank you very much.)