Idiocracy now! Hollywood makes a dumb movie about dumb voters.

• Author: Weigel, David
• Position: Swing Vote - Movie review

IF YOU CAN see Swing Vote the way I saw it, do so. First, score a free ticket from a D.C. activist group (in my case, Americans for Tax Reform). Second, get a seat next to an assistant secretary of education for the Bush administration and five rows in front of a disturbingly contented-looking Tom DeLay. Third, set your neck to "swivel" and watch a roomful of lobbyists, journalists, Beltway careerists, and politicians react as Hollywood lobotomizes their life's work.

Swing Vote is the latest lame entry in the oeuvre of low-denominator political pop. It's not quite as lousy as the 2003 Chris Rock vehicle Head of State (a dizzying fantasia about an inexperienced black Democrat who beats a blundering white Republican) or the 2006 Robin Williams landfill expander Man of the Year. There's at least one idea present in Swing Vote. Too bad the filmmakers don't seem to realize it.

On Election Day, shiftless, alcoholic New Mexico egg farmer Bud Johnson (Kevin Costner) is rousted out of bed by his daughter Molly, played by Madeline Carroll with precociousness on loan from Roald Dahl. She wants him to cast his vote so she can do a school project on the process; he wants to avoid the jury duty rolls. "Voting doesn't count for a goddamn thing!" shouts Bud as he drops Molly off and speeds off, late, for work. He loses his job, gets drunk, and (this really happens) hits his head on a wooden "Vote Today" sign, which knocks him out cold. Plucky Molly, rubbing away tears as she sits by the polling station, forges his signature, sneaks past poll workers, and casts her father's vote just as the power goes out. Because the election is a tie, and because New Mexico's election security is handled by Robert Mugabe (I'm assuming), the state tracks Bud down and tells him to cast a new vote in 10 days.

What follows is a blistering critique of that idiot of the American landscape: the undecided voter. Bud has no idea who's running. He's completely won over by bribes and flashy displays of power. When Richard Petty lets Bud drive his car to the landing strip housing Air Force One, Bud resolves to vote for President Andrew Boone (Kelsey Grammar, channeling Gerald Ford).Willie Nelson switches Bud back when he tells him to vote for acid-washed Democrat Donald Greenleaf (Dennis Hopper, reprising the hippie-gone-corporate role he played in George Romero's Land of the Dead). Most of Bud's sentences end in an awkward laugh or a mumble. When he has to talk about a political...