Watching everything from Fox News to The Daily Show its hard not to notice that American politics are ripe for the satirical picking. It can become a dirty game of he said, he said filled with attack ads and dark secrets. In a year with a presidential election that is about to enter the stretch run it would seem the perfect time for a movie like The Campaign.  Unfortunately for us it is way too tame to be anything but a big bowl of monotonous, uninteresting, vanilla paste.  I will try to explain the movie to you with little or no spoilers because you've actually already seen them in the trailer.

Will Ferrell stars as Rickey-Bobby retread Democrat Cam Brady, a North Carolina congressman who has run unopposed for the last five terms and sees no reason to worry he will be beaten now, that is until he commits a political faux-pas.  Seeing that there is an opening in their district two corrupt businessmen, Motch brothers Glen (John Lithgow) and Wade (Dan Aykroyd) use the incident as the perfect time to enter their own candidate on the Republican ticket.  Enter Zack Galifinakis as Marty Huggins, local boob who is the head of town tourism and an embarrassment to his successful father played by Brian Cox.  The plan is to sell the district to the People's Republic of China and continue their illegal dealings on American soil but use China's non-existence employment laws to pay employees $0.50 an hour.  Galifinakis' Huggins is finally let in on the plan and has no desire to embrace the Motch brothers plot to "insource" jobs.  The Motch bothers then hop behind Cam Brady, who after winning the election sees all his faults and resigns his seat to Huggins who outs the bothers plan.  Mild thrills.

Look, I tried to write this thing as straight as possible to make it as boring as the film was but I've started, erased, restarted, and erased some more.  So I'm getting more exhausted writing about it than actually watching it.  Both Ferrell and Galifinakis are tame and lame, the gags are redundant, you forget Lithgow and Aykroyd are actually in this movie until they pop back up in the middle and at that point you don't really care what they want to do.  If you laughed at the trailer than you've seen everything that could be consider the big jokes.

You would figure a comedy starring both Ferrell and Galifinakis would be an in your face laughfest, but in all honesty Ferrell and Galifinakis seemed to have lost their respective fastballs.  Will Ferrell was the king of comedy for more than a decade with hits like Talladega Nights, Anchorman, Step Brothers and Elf but lately his act has grown stale, he just seems to be playing the same guy over and over.  Even he seems to be getting bored with it which is why he has tried taking the next step over to drama with Stranger than Fiction and Everything Must Go with great success.  Instead of continuing on that train he seems content to play the same schmucks. At this point if you've seen any Will Ferrell movie, than you've seen every Will Ferrell movie. There isn't much anticipation for Anchorman 2 from this guy.

Galifinakis never had the same film success as Ferrell and it's not hard to see why. His stand up act isn't for everyone but his crude, subtle humor is what makes him such a hit. However his turn to film has seen him get away from what actually made him successful.  He had a star making turn as Allen in the mega-hit The Hangover, but after just one sequel that franchise has rapidly started to fizzle to the point where the third one is looked upon with disdain. I wonder if Allen will drug anyone, or Stu will be a wild man, oh wait is there going to be a wedding?  These guys are so crazy.  Galifinakis has even admitted to being uncomfortable with the success the franchise has brought him.  Like Ferrell, Galifinakis has the talent to be a solid actor - see his turn in It's Kind of A Funny Story - but Hollywood just sees him as a bumbling idiot and he is only going to be cast as such.

At this point both guys just seem to be doing it for the paychecks.

The only performance to illicit any real chuckles was Dylan McDermott's underused campaign manager Tim Wattley (a nod to Brian Cranston's classic Seinfeld character).  Yeah that's right I wanted more Dylan McDermott.  I never thought I'd utter that phrase but he actually steals the show in every scene he's in with Ferrell and Galifinakis.  He's creepy, arrogant, and understands how ridiculous everything going on around him really is, but still has no problem using it to gain an advantage.  I want to see more of McDermott in comedy? I guess I do.

Outside of him nothing special to see here.