W

here have you gone, 
Jon Stewart? Our 
nation turns its 
lonely eyes to you. (Woo woo 
woo.)
The former Daily Show host, 
and longtime torch-bearer 
for a certain brand of caus-
tic Jewish political humor, 
has been largely absent from 
public eye since he took his 
bow from the show in 2015. 
His timing was auspicious: 
Stewart’
s final episode was also 
the same night that Donald 
Trump made his debut on the 
debate stage in the Republican 
primaries, in the process fur-
ther eroding the line between 
politics and comedy, news and 
“fake news.”
Now Stewart is back with 
something that isn’
t news 
at all. But it wants to be. 
Irresistible, a new movie he 
wrote and directed (his second 
film after the 2014 Iran-set 
drama Rosewater), is a political 
satire set in the post-Trump 
era. It follows what happens 
when national political strat-
egists descend on a may-
oral election in small-town 
Wisconsin, trying to pervert 
it to their own agendas. Call it 

Washington Goes To Mr. Smith.
Stewart casts his old Daily 
Show correspondent Steve 
Carell as Gary Zimmer, an 
NPR-loving Democratic strat-
egist bemoaning his party’
s 
inability to connect with white 
Midwestern voters in the wake 
of Trump’
s near-sweep of the 
Rust Belt in 2016. When Gary 
sees a viral video of a mel-
ancholy army colonel (Chris 
Cooper) taking on his rural 
Wisconsin town’
s new immi-
grant registration policy at a 
town hall, he’
s instantly smit-
ten. This gun-toting, plainspo-
ken veteran, he believes, is the 
Democrats’
 ticket back to the 
White House. 
Gary’
s demographic exper-
iment becomes all-out war 
when his bleached-blonde 
Republican rival (Rose Byrne) 
catches wind of the race and 
throws her party’
s campaign 
muscle behind the incumbent 
mayor, transforming the town 
overnight into a grotesque 
carnival of outside money. 
And the national media causes 
further trouble once they pick 
up on the scoop; many cable-
news talking heads play them-
selves as they sputter through 

various sound-bite inanities.
Influence in politics has 
long been one of Stewart’
s 
biggest hobbyhorses, and he 
relishes the chance to lay into 
the gulf between these yam-
mering Washington elites and 
the close-knit, largely white, 
supposedly apolitical group of 
voters they’
re courting. The 
film’
s best bits send up the 
emptiness of this machine. 
When Gary berates his staff 
by yelling “I need some 
Hispanics!” over and over, 

he turns on a dime with the 
classic political apology: “I am 
profoundly disappointed in the 
comments that I just made.”
Irresistible has another dis-
appointment in it, though. 
Much of the movie seems 
like it’
s rooted in the version 
of politics Stewart made fun 
of for two decades on the 
Daily Show, instead of what 
it’
s become in the five years 
since. The ugliest aspects of 
post-2016 campaigning — the 
active voter suppression, the 
bigoted dog-whistles, the will-
ful ignorance of basic facts — 
go largely unremarked-upon 
here. In their place is material 
about Super PACs and both-
sides emptiness that feels so … 
 
last election cycle. 
We can’
t really blame 
Stewart, though. Reality out-
paced satire long ago, and it’
s 
hard to mock the political 
establishment without becom-
ing a part of it. For a comic 
like him, who’
s usually so good 
about keeping his finger on the 
pulse, this opportunity must 
have been pretty irresistible. 

“Irresistible” is available to rent from 

most VOD platforms. 

Arts&Life

movie review

34 | JULY 9 • 2020 

The Jewish comedian’
s new movie is 
warmed-over political satire.

ANDREW LAPIN EDITOR

IsJon
Stewart
Still
‘Irresistible’?

DANIEL MCFADDEN/FOCUS FEATURES

A Democratic strategist (Steve Carell) tries to convince a Wisconsinite (Mackensie 
Davis) to back her father’
s mayoral campaign in Jon Stewart’
s “Irresistible”.

DANIEL MCFADDEN/FOCUS FEATURES

