Review – Election

Anyone regularly engaged in the sometimes thankless task of educating teenagers ought to get a real kick out of this film. It’s one of the rare occasions in which Hollywood features adolescents as adolescents rather than miniaturized 30 year olds (played by actual 30 year olds). The main plot centers around a student presidential election and the attempts of a civics teacher (Matthew Broderick) to keep an annoying popular girl (Reese Witherspoon) from carrying the day. Though the action is too often interrupted by an annoying subplot involving the protagonist’s marital infidelity, for the most part the film stays amusing and relatively faithful to the way high school really was. If anyone is to be congratulated here, it’s the casting director; everyone from the leads right down to the principal and the janitor are played by actors who have their roles down pat. Worth seeing