Movies - Election

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	Movies - Election

Election is a 1999 film adapted from a novel of the same name by Tom Perrotta. The film was directed by Alexander Payne and stars Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon, and Chris Klein.

Plot

Election is the story of Jim McAllister, a high school teacher whose enthusiastic involvement with various school-related functions masks his frustration with other aspects of his life. It is also the story of Tracy Flick, an overachiever whose obsession with getting into a good college and other school activities masks both a vindictive and sexual side. The previous year, Tracy began a sexual affair with a teacher who was McAllister's best friend. As a result, the teacher was fired from his job, his wife left him, and he was forced to leave town and move back into his parents' basement. Tracy meanwhile walked away with no one knowing of her sexual liaisons after her mother threatened to sue the school if the details of her daughter's relationship with a male teacher became public knowledge. McAllister finds himself repulsed by Tracy's evil side but yet also sexually attracted to her.

Tracy announces that she is running for student body president. This would result in her and McAllister spending a large amount of time together (as McAllister is in charge of organizing the school's student government). McAllister decides to knock Tracy down a peg and teach her a lesson in humility. McAllister secretly convinces the rich but naive jock Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) to run against Tracy. Meanwhile Paul's younger (and secretly gay) sister Tammy (Jessica Campbell) is dumped by her lover. To spite Tammy, who reacts negatively to her lover's proclamation that she was straight and just "experimenting" with lesbianism, Tammy's ex hits on Paul and quickly becomes his new girlfriend. Angry, Tammy decides to run for president to spite her brother, under a platform that student government is a sham and would be treated as such by her if elected.

The campaign between Tracy and Paul immediately becomes personal, as the working-class Tracy hates rich kid Paul. To Tracy, the election is all about class warfare and that by winning the Presidency, she'll be recognized by her fellow students and become as popular as Paul. Paul meanwhile leaves the running of his campaign to his new girlfriend. Paul sees the campaign less about achieving anything or spiting Tracy and instead about finding purpose with his life after an injury keeps him from playing football.

On the eve of the election, Tracy angrily destroys all of the campaign posters Paul posted at the school. She claims to be innocent and threatens legal actions against the school when McAllister tries to use her affair with his best friend to impeach Tracy's credibility. Tammy claims to have destroyed the posters, and her parents transfer her to a private school for girls, which makes her extremely happy.

McAllister sleeps with his best friend's ex-wife, who has been hanging around the McAllister family non-stop since her divorce and created much sexual tension in Paul who has been attracted to her the entire time. She tells McAllister's wife. After his wife expels him from their house, Jim is stung by a bee (causing his face to swell up) and returns to the school to oversee the counting of the ballots of the election and finds that Tracy won. It is revealed that Paul, who has no ill will towards Tracy, voted for her. When McAllister sees several of Tracy's supporters involved in the counting of the votes signally to Tracy that she had won, he secretly disposes of several of the ballots that were for Tracy and awards the election to Paul.

A pro-Tracy student volunteer refuses to accept McAllister's count of the ballots. The discarded ballots are found, and Tracy made president. McAllister resigns from his job and becomes a pariah. Divorced and humiliated in Nebraska, he packs his bags and leaves town.

McAllister becomes a tour guide at a major museum in New York City, a city he's wanted to visit since childhood and finds himself more at peace and in a stable relationship with another woman. He claims that even if Tracy becomes a rich and successful person that she'll be utterly miserable due to the way she spent her life ruthlessly climbing the ladder of success without any time off to have fun.

Jim visits Washington DC and accidentally sees Tracy as she is entering a limo with a congressman, presumably as his high-powered aide. However, their body language plus the fact that most congressmen don't let their aides sit with them in the back of the limo make Jim fear that Tracy is continuing to seduce men for the sake of power and tosses a Pepsi at the car and runs away when the driver reacts. The film ends with Jim back at work in New York, enjoying teaching but resenting type-a personality tourists who remind him of Tracy.

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Movies - Election

Plot

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