Election

(Note: This review refers to the Blu-ray version of the DVD.)

Alexander Payne's wicked satire of power and (social) politics set in the overheated incubator of a high school student-body election is as sharp and perceptive now as it was in 1999. Matthew Broderick plays passionately dedicated and somewhat condescending civics teacher Jim McAllister, whose extracurricular involvement helps compensate for a passionless marriage. Reese Witherspoon is Tracy Flick, the chirpy, aggressively active overachiever who sees winning as merely an act of will, and she's the most willful student in school. It sets itself up as a battle of wills between the not-so-benevolent teacher, who drafts a sweetly oblivious and genuinely generous jock (Chris Klein in the performance of his career) to give Tracy competition, and the ruthlessly ambitious superstudent who sees student government office as her due. But Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor (adapting the novel by Tom Perrotta) are equal-opportunity satirists, and their sly wit dismantles everything from high school culture to suburban complacency. There's a savage wit to the bad behavior motivated by unchecked ambition, emotional need and simple human nature, justified in self-serving monologues that reveal far more about themselves than the events they report. But even at their most extreme, these specimens of human frailty are awfully human, which alone makes it more interesting and perceptive than the far more celebrated and overrated "American Beauty."

The Blu-ray debut features commentary by Payne recorded for the original 1999 DVD release, an earnest track on which the director explains his decisions and his imagery. It's fine, but Payne is not the most exciting monologist and he works better with a partner. There are no further supplements.