HBO's Recount.

"This is absolutely the perfect moment to revisit the 2000 election," writes Matthew Gilbert in the Boston Globe. "With the new movie Recount, HBO is either remarkably savvy or the beneficiary of happy coincidence.... Timeliness, though, does not equal drama or comedy, and Recount is a surprisingly enervated and enervating piece of work."

Updated through 5/25.

For the New York Times' Alessandra Stanley, this is "an astute and deliciously engrossing film" which "retells the tale of Florida in all its bizarre and inglorious moments, from haggling over the 'hanging chad' and 'butterfly ballots' to the ruckus between the Florida secretary of state, Katherine Harris, and the Palm Beach County Canvassing Board. Recount is not satire; it's a mordantly serious look at a moment when character, political influence and luck fatefully collided."

"The core problem with Recount lies in its being at once fatally cynical and touchingly naive about American democracy," counters Troy Patterson in Slate. "It grovels for the approval of political junkies while flaunting the shallowest interest in politics, and everything flows from there in the most silly fashion."

"If it's vaguely eerie that the film's premiere on 25 May coincides with current ado over popular, delegate, and electoral counts, it's also germane to the film's essential point," writes Cynthia Fuchs at PopMatters. "That is, the oft-repeated claim that 'the system works' is by definition duplicitous, ironic, and right, all at the same time. Indeed, when James Baker (Tom Wilkinson) makes that very declaration at the end of Recount, it's enough to send shivers down your spine. Though Recount doesn't press the case, it seems plain enough that the system remains infinitely gameable for those who know it, those in power who wish to remain in power."

Sara Cardace talks with screenwriter Danny Strong for the Vulture.

And now, I'm going to so something I never do... except now: Quote an entry in full. Comes from VF Daily:

Before you park yourself in front of Recount, HBO's critically acclaimed new dramatization of the 2000 chad-tastrophe, take a minute to read Evgenia Peretz's mind-boggling account of how the media totally screwed Al Gore and stuck us with the least popular president in the history of popularity - who, if Vincent Bugliosi is to be believed, basically deserves to be executed.

You might also check out Sally Bedell Smith's devastating account of how Bill and Hillary Clinton basically more or less hamstrung Gore's campaign. (Note to Barack Obama: read this before making any vice-presidential decisions!)

And if all that sounds like a lot of heavy reading for a Memorial Day weekend, you can always just look at these funny pictures of Washington people partying!

Earlier: Robert Abele (LA Weekly), Joshua Alston (Newsweek) and Edward Wyatt (NYT).

Online listening tip. Laura Dern, who plays Katherine Harris, is a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Screens tomorrow and Monday nights.

Updates, 5/25: "Laced with dark humor and somehow making what amounts to a long chess game dramatically compelling, Recount is probably the best made-for-TV movie of the year, a distinction which would carry more weight if a) the various networks made more made-for-TV movies and b) it hadn't arrived at such a fortuitous moment, six days before the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws panel meets to decide what to do about Florida in yet another election-related brouhaha," writes Todd VanDerWerff at the House Next Door. "In another 20 years, Recount probably won't play as persuasively as it does right now, in this moment, when it largely stirs up feelings long dormant in an electorate that desires, at some primal level, a do-over. Largely unable to take the long view because of when it was made, Recount is definitely a chronicle of its time and place, but it can't find anything larger to say about the political process than, 'Wasn't it sad that Al Gore lost and we had to put up with this?'"

Choire Sicha talks with Danny Strong for the Los Angeles Times.

"Dern's performance is something special: hilarious, deadly serious, a master class in walking the line between going for a laugh and going for the jugular," writes JJ at As Little As Possible.

"[T]hough Recount is artless and not much worse than Charlie Wilson's War, Mike Nichols's film at least understood itself as a caricature, whereas Recount behaves as if it were the real deal," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant. "Only interested in scoring cheap shots, Recount tells us that conservatives are bullies on a very fundamental level, but it's most effective at conveying the sense that Hollywood liberals are only interested in making movies that showcase how right they were all along. They were, of course, but that's no excuse for this movie's wholesale smugness."

The New Republic hosts Jonathan Chait, Jay Roach and Danny Strong's discussion of Recount.

"So just how (un)likely are these recount things anyway?" 538 does the math.

Posted by dwhudson at May 24, 2008 7:36 AM