Warren Beatty advised George McGovern in the
1972 campaign, thereby making Nixon a landslide winner. Later, he
went on to nail Madonna, and apparently enjoyed it enough to
allow himself to be filmed in her grotesque documentary "Truth
or Dare" (wherein he actually looked to be a beacon of
sanity and maturity). Somewhere in between these ignominies, he
must have conceived "Bulworth." Or it's Annette Bening's
fault.
Not "Birth of a Nation," but closer
to Huggy Bear-in-Starsky and Hutch offensive, the film begins as
a lampoon of the modern American politician beholden to the evil
and corrupt corporations and ends up as a morality tale that even
the brothers are supposed to understand. The senator, you see,
has sold out and - gasp! (a gasp probably heard most audibly in
the relative splendor of a Beverly Hills lifestyle) - he now is
in the collective pockets of the health insurance industry, the
welfare reformers, and the anti-affirmative action crowd. For
those of Beatty's stripe, this is the modern equivalent to owning
slaves.
Beatty, as the politician, suffers a breakdown
in the midst of his crisis of conscience (and finances). On the
eve of a primary, and, in a suicidal funk, he arranges his own
murder for insurance money to his heirs. Why? Who cares? The
cheap plot device allows Beatty to speak the plain "troof"
in his final days.
He embraces the African-American urban culture,
or at least, Beatty's vision of same (it appears to be culturally
tone-deaf, more "Jeffersons" than Beatty might want to
admit). As he speaks the "troof", he raps, and wears
the acoutrements of the urban ghetto, and fumbles his way through
the closing days of his primary. And he preaches, in garbled rap,
that the parties are all the same, the rich folk are bad, bad,
bad, and the country is controlled by a monolithic entity (including
the media) that keeps the brothers down. As for the brothers,
they are used either as beatific just-seen-the-light types or
"You go, Bulworf" fly girls or beckground for the
Beatty-as-homey sight gag. All it takes is this addled but
straight-up white man to turn their lives around, to stand up to
the racist LAPD, to eschew the drug trade and to
achieve social grace. Halle Berry, the whitest
of the black characters in skin tone is hired to be his demise
and becomes his soulmate; the little black drug-dealers are
treated to ice cream by the kind white man who stands up to the
bad white cops; the drug lord (Don Cheadle) changes his ways at
the sight of such honesty and compassion. Why, Beatty even
manages to find the Cosbys in South Central, and he crashes on
their couch for a bit. And what he sees in the 'hood - the
desolation wrought by Cigna and Humana - he almost musters a tear.
Very poignant to this benevolent plantation master who has seen
the light.
And he eats collard greens. Except, it's not
collard greens. It's kale! Get it? A funny white man eats collard
greens, but they aren't collard greens, they are kale, and he
doesn't know the difference. Get it?
But wait. There are more yuks. Because if the
black folks are to be engaged, it got to rap, it got to groove,
and it got to be Jimmie JJ Walker funny. So Beatty bounces from
one venue to the next, saying "cocksucker" and "motherfucker"
- because that's the "troof" both the brother and the
American people will understand. And he employs various get-ups,
often approaching the comic genius of Adam Sandler.
So, to be fair, there are laughs in what is
otherwise Beatty's fatuous and outmoded tribute to his infantile
political dogma.
Naturally, Beatty becomes martyr. Prior to that
moment - and if you don't see it coming, you should be ashamed -
he does some Chevy Chase-as-Gerald Ford pratfalls, jumps in a
fountain, and tokes a joint.
At the heart of this fluffy broadside against
the status quo is the rich Hollywood conceit that, if only
someone talked straight to the anaestethized, bamboozled people
about the falsity of their existence, the system would be fixed,
schools would be changed, health care would be governmentalized,
the ghetto would be energized, and Huey Newton would get his
props in the lexicon of social reformers.
And who better than an aging Hollywood type who
dabbles in politics and used to hang with Hef?
By the end, Beatty's revelation to the people (never
fully realized through either McGovern or Madonna) is a big hit.
He wins his primary. Hints of a presidential run are dropped. We
see the light! He's not Clinton. He's not Gingrich. He's not Dole.
He's Bulworf'. And he's down.
The performances are all rather good, but their
recommendation doesn't really feel right. Like saying, "Yea,
I know David Duke is a scumbag, but those cheekbones!" Still,
Beatty exhibits deft physical comedy and Oliver Platt as his scum-sucking
campaign manager has some good moments. Plus, we get to see a few
other "stars" lend themselves to the project, even
though they don't have many lines. Solidarity, Warren! Solidarity!
I am glad of the film, for there are people who
still adhere to the tripe Beatty is selling, and between hosting
talk shows, fighting Alar, and rushing to "Larry King"
to bemoan the horror of celebrity when a Princess Diana dies, it
is nice to know that they have a good rental. I also hope it will
encourage Alec Baldwin to run for something. Still, in the genre
of self-congratulatory, lefty sermons, they'd do better with
"Bob Roberts," "An American President," or
"Wag the Dog." All pretty awful films, but, in
comparison to "Bulworth," true gems.
