Head of State

For this year’s “President’s Day Movie Review,” I thought I would switch things up and talk about a political comedy, which is probably something I don’t think I ever did before. Let’s take a look at the 2003 comedy, “Head of State.”

This is a flawed movie, but not a boring one and doesn’t lack in intelligence. Roger Ebert said in his review, “What it does wrong is hard to miss, but what it does right is hard to find: it makes an angry and fairly timely comic attack on an electoral system where candidates don't say what they really think but simply repeat safe centrist banalities.”

In “Head of State,” the presidential and vice presidential candidates of an unknown party, obviously the Democrats, are killed when their campaign planes crash into each other less than two months before the election. Trying to find a replacement candidate, the party decides Mays Gilliam, played by Chris Rock, a doubtful Washington, D.C., alderman who has saved a woman and her cat from a burning building. He looks like he has no chance of winning, but obviously party boss Sen. Bill Arnot, played by James Rebhorn, doesn’t want him to win – he wants to utilize him as a token black candidate who will lose but win useless points for the party.

If Mays can’t win, then he has nothing to lose and his plan is obvious: Instead of trying to satisfy everyone, he should say the unspeakable. Ebert noted, “We've seen this strategy before from movie candidates, notably Kevin Kline in "Dave," Warren Beatty in "Bulworth" and Eddie Murphy in "The Distinguished Gentleman," and the notion runs back to Frank Capra. What Rock brings to it is brashness--zingers that hurt. "What kind of a drug policy," he wants to know, "makes crack cheaper than asthma medicine?" The movie, directed and co-written by Rock, is wickedly cynical about the American electoral system.” This shows Mays having a prostitute named Nikki (Stephanie March) because, campaign manager Martin Geller (Dylan Baker) explains in a way that you’ll just have to see the movie because I’m not filling this review with anything inappropriate. This gives him an opponent, the incumbent vice president, played by Nick Searcy, who’s famous because he’s Sharon Stone’s cousin, and his motto has a type of quality: “God bless America – and no place else.” Mays goes through the first weeks of his campaign, following the instructions of his strongly conservative campaign advisers, Geller and Debra Lassiter (Lynn Whitfield) until his brother, a Chicago bail bondsman named Mitch (the late Bernie Mac), asks him when he’s going to start speaking his mind. When he does, the first thing he says is that he wants Mitch as his running mate.

This is one of the areas that doesn’t work. Ebert noted, “Bernie Mac could be a funny veep candidate, but not as a bondsman whose peculiar personal quirk is to hit people as hard as he can as a sign of friendship. The character should have been redefined, and a scene where Mays and Mitch batter each other should have been edited out; it works only as an awkward puzzlement for the audience.”

Another area that doesn’t work is the character of Kim, played by Robin Givens, who beings the movie as Mays’ fiancé, is broken up with, and she turns into a crazy stalker who follows him everywhere, overacting on a terrifyingly harsh way, until she exits in a very cruel way. The character could have been broken up with, especially since Mays meets a cute caterer named Lisa, played by Tamala Jones, who looks like first lady material.

Ebert credited, “Chris Rock is a smart, fast-talking comedian with an edge; I keep wondering when the academy will figure out he could host the Oscars. Here he plays his usual persona, more or less, in a movie where some of the edges are rough and others are serrated.” We keep getting these types of movies where political candidates say what they think, are not afraid to offend, cut through the nonsense and take stands. Must want to fulfill some dreams about what we want to see.

This is a type of comedy that I think everyone should check out, especially if you’re fan of Chris Rock and Bernie Mac. We won’t be seeing any of this in this year’s election, but it would be something we wish to see. If you want to get a good laugh at a spoof of the presidential election, this is the one for you. Check it out and see for yourself. If there is any criticisms against this movie, don’t pay any attention to it, see the movie and judge for yourself.

Happy President’s Day everyone! Stay tuned this Friday for the next installment of “Black History Movie Month.”