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“Pick Flick!” ELECTION Screens November 2nd at Schlafly Bottleworks – We Are Movie Geeks

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“Pick Flick!” ELECTION Screens November 2nd at Schlafly Bottleworks

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“The sight of Tracy at that moment affected me in a way I can’t fully explain. Part of it was that she was spying, but mostly it was her face. Who knew how high she would climb in life? How many people would suffer because of her? I had to stop her, now!”

ELECTION screens Wednesday, November 2nd at Schlafly Bottleworks Restaurant and Bar (7260 Southwest Ave.- at Manchester – Maplewood, MO 63143) as part of Webster University’s Award-Winning Strange Brew Film Series.

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When one writes biting satire, it logically makes sense that the person who is insulting should know his or her topic. This is why high school life has never truly undergone an appropriate cinema vision. We either get THE SUBSTITUTE or HIGH SCHOOL HIGH Either way, it’s a sad collection of overdrawn clichés that don’t work anymore. This is where ELECTION, Alexander Payne’s brilliant comedy from 1999 draws its thin line. Every character in ELECTION is a person (or persons) that you know. We’ve all met a Tracy Flick, Paul Metzler, or had a teacher like Jim McAllister. Although each character may be taken to extremes in this movie, you feel for them because you know them.

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Reese Witherspoon’s Tracey Flick is one o the great comedic female characters in cinema. Tracy is running for president of George Washington Carver High School and is the kind of girl that is so overzealous and over-motivated that it tends to make those around her who aren’t, either hate her, or feel bad about themselves. Mathew Broaderick’s Jim McAllister has a loving wife and a modest job as a teacher at Carver High, but through a series of flashbacks where we see him teaching the same thing every single year, and we begin to think that he is lying when he tells us he loves his job. He drives a small hatchback that looks like it probably ran him about a thousand dollars and came off the line in the early 70s. Immediately, he enlists Paul Metzler, (Chris Klein) the injured star quarterback to run against Tracy. He can’t bear to see her get what she believes is her ‘destiny’ just because no one is opposing her. This underhanded partnership will bring to the forefront the deep unhappiness he has for his life. He along with others in the film will be forced to a moral and ethical (what’s the difference?) crossroads of which the implications for the decision will undoubtedly be big, or at least big in terms of one of those human interest stories that have a life of their own.

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ELECTION will make you laugh and cringe, because it is so dark and goes so deep but it’s also one of the funniest, entertaining and most clever films of the ‘90s. Don’t miss it when it screens Wednesday November 2nd at Schlafly Bottleworks Restaurant and Bar in Maplewood (7260 Southwest Ave.- at Manchester – Maplewood, MO 63143) as part of their Strange Brew film series . The movie starts at 8pm and admission is $5. A yummy variety of food from Schlafly’s kitchen is available as are plenty of pints of their famous home-brewed beer.

A Facebook invite for the event can be found HERE