Movie Reviews: Swing Vote

Reports have indicated that Kevin Costner invested $20 million of his own money in Swing Vote. Critics come out to agree that he's not likely to take it back. Lou Lumenick in the New York Post calls it a "brain-dead political satire/tear-jerker." Weslie Moore in the Boston Globe makes the peak that "the movie has no teeth, no vision and no real insights," and so asks, "Why are we still microwaving Frank Capra's old casseroles?" And John DeFore in the Austin American Statesman writes, "Swing Vote is as hollow as the worst political discourse America has seen lately." But several critics suggest that, despite its faults, the movie's heart is in the correct place. Manohla Dargis in the New York Times calls it "a pleasant muddle," patch Claudia Puig in USA Today refers to as "this sanely entertaining moving picture." And Glenn Whipp concludes in the Los Angeles Daily News,"For all its faults -- and they are numerous -- Swing Vote is a hard movie to dislike by the end simply because it nails the uplifting moment that it has spent two hours chasing."