Election (1999 film)

Election is a 1999 American black comedy film directed by Alexander Payne from a screenplay by Payne and Jim Taylor, based on Tom Perrotta's 1998 novel of the same name.

The plot revolves around a student body election and satirizes politics and high school life. The film stars Matthew Broderick as Jim McAllister, a popular high school social studies teacher, and Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick, an overachieving student whom he dislikes. When Tracy runs for student government president, McAllister sabotages her candidacy by backing a rival candidate and tampering with the ballot count.

Although not a commercial success, Election received widespread critical acclaim, along with an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, a Golden Globe nomination for Witherspoon for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical, and three Independent Spirit Awards including Best Feature Film in 1999.

Plot
Jim McAllister is a teacher of U.S. history and civics at Carver High School in Omaha, Nebraska. One of his students is Tracy Flick, an overachieving junior whose mother Judith encourages her to strive for success. Earlier in the year, McAllister's colleague and best friend, geometry teacher Dave Novotny, was fired from his job and divorced by his wife Linda after engaging in a sexual relationship with Tracy. While McAllister felt Dave needed to suffer consequences, he resents the lack of repercussions for Tracy.

McAllister struggles to conceive a child with his wife, Diane, and subsequently begins to have sexual fantasies of both Linda and Tracy. Appalled by Tracy's unopposed run for student government president and dreading further proximity to her, McAllister persuades Paul Metzler, a popular, good-natured, but dimwitted football player, to enter the race. Sidelined from football with a broken leg sustained in a skiing accident, Paul finds his candidacy gives him purpose. It also infuriates Tracy, who expects to run unchallenged and resents Paul's popularity and privileged upbringing.

Tammy Metzler, Paul's adopted younger sister, is dumped by her girlfriend Lisa Flanagan, who becomes Paul's girlfriend and campaign manager. Tammy exacts revenge by running for president herself. In her speech at a school assembly, she denounces student government as a sham and vows to dissolve it if she wins, rallying the students to a rowdy standing ovation. The principal, Walt Hendricks, retaliates by suspending her.

Late one Sunday night while working on the school yearbook, Tracy sees that one of her campaign posters has come unstuck from the wall. Trying to secure it, she accidentally rips the poster apart, then furiously destroys the other candidates' campaign posters and discards them in a dumpster, unaware that Tammy is watching. The next day, McAllister confronts Tracy, suspecting that she removed the posters. Tracy feigns innocence and trades threats with McAllister, but Tammy rescues her by appearing with the torn posters and falsely claiming responsibility. Tammy is expelled and her name is struck from the ballot.

McAllister has an affair with Linda, Dave's ex-wife, the day before the election. Linda asks McAllister to rent a motel room for an after-school rendezvous, but she fails to attend. When McAllister drives to Linda's house to find her, he is stung by a bee on his eyelid. He returns home to find Linda and his wife Diane talking. Knowing Linda has exposed their encounter, he spends the night in his car.

McAllister oversees the tally of the ballots, which finds Tracy winning by a single vote. Seeing Tracy peering in on the vote count and preemptively celebrating, he spitefully disposes of two of Tracy's ballots, throwing the election to Paul. The discarded ballots are later discovered, and Tracy becomes president. McAllister is forced to resign, and the election rigging makes headlines. Diane divorces him, taking the house and most of their joint assets.

Publicly humiliated, McAllister leaves Nebraska and fulfills his dream of moving to New York City. He becomes a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and begins dating Jillian, a fellow museum worker. Paul develops an active social life at the University of Nebraska, though without Lisa, who dumps him. Tammy finds a new girlfriend at her all-girls private Catholic school. Tracy attends Georgetown University, where she similarly isolates herself from her peers due to her work-centric nature and is dismayed that many of her classmates were admitted primarily through connections. Tracy misses Dave's intellect and wonders if he became a novelist as she believed he would; the film shows Dave working in a hardware store in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he now lives with his parents.

On a visit to Washington, D.C., McAllister spots Tracy getting into a limousine with congressman Mike Geiger, a Republican representative from Nebraska. Infuriated that she will go through life as she did at Carver, he hurls a cup of soda at the limousine's backglass before fleeing. The film ends with McAllister at the museum posing a question to a group of elementary school children; an overeager little girl is the only one to respond. He ignores her.

Production
Producers Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa sent director Alexander Payne an unpublished manuscript from novelist Tom Perrotta called "Election" in 1996. Payne was initially uninterested in directing a high school movie, but changed his mind after he read the manuscript. "It was set in a high school, but it wasn’t a high school story, per se. Also what attracted me was the formal exercise of doing a movie with multiple points of view and multiple voice-overs," said Payne. The novel's rights were sold to Payne in January 1997 and it was officially published in March 1998.

The novel was inspired by the following two key events: the 1992 United States presidential election, in which Ross Perot entered as a third-party candidate (a move echoed by Tammy Metzler), and a 1992 incident at Memorial High School in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, in which a pregnant student was elected homecoming queen, but staff announced a different winner and burned the ballots to cover it up.

The film uses a number of stylized techniques in its storytelling, particularly through the use of freeze frames, flashbacks and voiceovers, which allow sections of the narrative to be delivered from the points of view of the four main characters (Mr. McAllister, Tracy, Paul, and Tammy).

The film was primarily shot on location around the Omaha metro area in the fall of 1997, most notably in Papillion, Bellevue and the Dundee neighborhood. Papillion-La Vista Senior High School portrayed the fictitious Carver High School with many of the background extras being actual enrolled students at the time. Minor scenes were filmed at Younkers in Westroads Mall, the Old Market and the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium.

Alternate ending
The film's original ending, which was received poorly by test audiences, was not known until a rough workprint of it was found in a box of VHS tapes at a yard sale in 2011. This ending also appears in the third draft of the script, which can be read online. It is faithful to the book: McAllister stays in Omaha and is hired as a used car salesman by one of his former students instead of moving to New York. Tracy encounters McAllister while looking to buy a car and the two settle their differences before she has him sign her yearbook.

Reception
Election was not a box office success as it grossed only $17.2 million against a budget of $8.5-$25 million.

Critical response
Election received critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 92%, based on 114 reviews, with an average rating of 7.90/10. The critical consensus reads, "Election successfully combines dark humor and intelligent writing in this very witty and enjoyable film." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 83 out of 100, based on 33 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B−" on scale of A to F. It later placed at #5 in the first annual Village Voice Film Poll.

Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half out of four stars, praising Witherspoon and Payne, and saying, "...here is a movie that is not simply about an obnoxious student, but also about an imperfect teacher, a lockstep administration, and a student body that is mostly just marking time until it can go out into the world and occupy valuable space".

Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote: "Brandishes the sort of intelligent wit and bracing nastiness that will make it more appealing to discerning adults than to teens who just want to have fun."

Desson Howe from The Washington Post recommended the film, saying it was "the satire of the season, a hilarious, razor-sharp indictment of the American Dream," also praising Payne for finding "a perfect fulcrum between humor and tragedy, between black comedy and poignancy."

According to Payne, it is also President Barack Obama's favorite political film.

Accolades
Election is ranked #61 on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies", #389 on Empires "500 Greatest Movies of All Time" and #9 on Entertainment Weeklys list of the "50 Best High School Movies", while Witherspoon's performance was ranked at #45 on the list of the "100 Greatest Film Performances of All Time" by Premiere.

Home media
Election was released on DVD on October 19, 1999, and Blu-ray on January 20, 2009. A special edition Blu-ray was released by The Criterion Collection on December 16, 2017, with a 4K restoration of the film.

Sequel
In December 2022, it was announced that a film adaptation of the novel's 2022 sequel, Tracy Flick Can't Win, was being developed for Paramount+. Witherspoon is slated to reprise her role as Tracy Flick and co-produce under her Hello Sunshine banner, while Payne would return to direct and co-write with Jim Taylor. A year later, while promoting The Holdovers (2023), Payne reiterated interest in the project, but would like to pursue other projects first. Payne said that he wants to make a loose adaptation of the novel with Taylor that included Broderick's Jim McAllister character, as well as divert from the high school setting of the novel, attributing to his averseness to "making another high school movie," saying, “I did Election. I did Holdovers. There are bits and pieces of it in Sideways, and a pilot I did, so I’m a little over it, so Jim and I are talking right now about how can we adapt that novel faithfully, but loosely, and put our own voice into it. We’ll get there. We’re not quite there, but we’ll get there."