Irresistible

With the intelligence, wit and biting satire you'd expect from Jon Stewart, IRRESISTIBLE is his baby as both screenwriter and director.

With both political parties equally skewered, it kept us laughing while it all too often hit close to reality.

As the film opens, Democratic political strategist Gary Zimmer (Steve Carell at his best) is suffering from Hillary hangover, his career in shambles after Trump's surprise win.

He finds his new muse in small town, conservative veteran Jack Hastings, perfectly embodied by the reliably great Chris Cooper (August Osage County).

Jack descends on the town to convince Hastings why he's really a Democrat and why he has to run.

When the campaign takes off, cutthroat Republican strategist Faith Brewster (the hilarious Rose Byrne) arrives with her entourage in the small town, turning it into a circus that lasts right up until election day.

Stewart has plenty of subtle tricks up his sleeve. We never saw the ending coming, but its incredibly satisfying in the current state of the world.

While it takes place today, it made me incredibly nostalgic for a time that now seems decades ago when opposing views could debate and learn from each other without the immediate hate and angry vitriol that seems like a mandatory preamble to ANY political discussion.

Stewart delivers a thought provoking but hilarious take on the absurdity of our modern political machine. But if that sounds heavy, dont worry, he delivers that message with almost non-stop laughs and biting humor.

We laughed a lot. Only after the film ended did we sit back and realize how thought provoking it was at the same time.

It earns its R rating with Faith and Gary's almost constant profane, devastating putdowns that had us in stitches.

The fact that it's so even handed in its satire might not resonate with folks too blindly embedded or angry on either side to laugh at themselves.

Perhaps the only thing that's even more extinct than the ability to rationally debate opposing viewpoints is our human ability to laugh at ourselves.

It almost seems like Stewart's uncovered an ancient artifact by creating a political commentary that has much more to say about politics than any specific viewpoint within the game.

For that alone, he and IRRESISTIBLE get an A.