Irresistible (2020)

It’s a two-word title. With a shift in colour writer-director Jon Stewart isolates the “resist” in “irresistible.” If the larger word suggests resignation the inner one calls for action, for reform. If the body seems a political satire the film concludes with a mule's kick.

The epilogue identifies both the narrative’s central target — the huge amount of money both spent on election campaigns and open to misappropriation and abuse — and a call for a radical transformation of America’s electoral system. It’s broken, every which way, as off-screen Stewart’s brief interview with a federal official affirms. 

The film’s opening sets the national context: Donald Trump’s 2016 surprise defeat of Hilary Clinton. The plot sends Democrat organizer Gary Zimmer to a small Wisconsin town to use a mayoralty race to launch a local hero in the party’s cause. Both parties pour huge bucks and tech resources into the minor election, afraid to lose a potential toehold.

If the plot seems outlandish, wait. It’s a funhouse version of the 2017 special election for Georgia's 6th congressional district, where the two parties and supporting groups blew over $55 million — without the happy ending here.

The local tragedy and several jokes reflect the current national situation. Certainly the town’s crumbling from the loss of its main industry speaks for the nation of small (and large) towns under duress. Both Zimmer and GOP spinner Faith blatantly confess the falsity of the spin-room. In an echo of the Trump lying streak, when Faith bald-faced claims to be from that small town Zimmer caves: “She said it. Now it’s true.” CNN and Fox News both come in for satiric slams. 

But the main drive is the exposure of the system. As Zimmer meets the small town the characters are played as the rubes and hicks we’ve come to expect from the urban pundits. But here the country mice turn the tables on the city mouse. 

When the joke turns out to be on Zimmer it’s also on us. Spoiler alert: they’ve been playing him, exploiting the political system to con big buck donations to save their town. Justice happens but only through a surprise deception and the locals’ exploitation of the Washington (and hence our) dismissive prejudices and false assumption of superiority.  

Why, the two roughnecks even know the diff between a simile and a metaphor! Is no prejudice sacred?

As we expect of Stewart, he inclines away from the Trump party and administration. But he also hasn’t lost his larger understanding that the problem goes beyond the parties, to the system’s abdication of American values and fairness. As Stewart views the nation’s paralysis, waste and dysfunction he utters this plague upon both their houses.