Election (Criterion Collection) (DVD)

Perky, overachieving Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) gets on the nerves of history teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) to begin with, but after she launches her campaign for high-school president and his personal life starts to fall apart, things spiral out of control. In Alexander Payne's satire ELECTION, the teacher becomes unhealthily obsessed with cutting his student down to size, covertly backing a spoiler candidate to stop her from steamrolling to victory, and putting in motion a series of dirty tricks and reckless promises with uncanny real-world political parallels. Adapting a then-unpublished novel by Tom Perrotta, Payne grounds the absurdity of his central dynamic in the recognizable the setting is his hometown of Omaha, and the accomplished cast is rounded out with nonprofessionals and distills his closely observed take on deeply flawed humanity to it's bitter but stealthily sympathetic essence.

Starring: Matthew Broderick, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Klein, Jessica Campbell, Mark Harelik, Frankie Ingrassia, Amy Falcone, Brian Tobin, Christa Young, David Wenzel, Emily Martin, Frankie Igrassia, Heather Koenig, James Devney, Jason Paige, Jeannie Brayman, Jillian Crane, Joel Parks, Jonathan Marion, L. Carmen Novoa, Larry Kaiser, Loren Nelson, Marilyn Tipp, Matt Golden, Matt Justesen, Nick D'Agosto, Nick Kenny, Delaney Driscoll, Molly Hagan, Colleen Camp, Phil Reeves, Matt Malloy, Jeanine Jackson, Holmes Osborne, Nicholas D'Agosto

Director: Albert Berger, David Gale, Keith Samples, Ron Yerxa