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