Blu-ray, DVD Release: Election

Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: Dec. 12, 2017
Price: DVD $22.99, Blu-ray $25.99
Studio: Criterion

Perky, overachieving Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon, Wild) gets on the nerves of history teacher Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick, Tower Heist)…and then some!…in Alexander Payne’s (The Descendants) 1999 comedy satire Election.

It’s merely an annoyance at the beginning, but after Tracy launches her campaign for high-school president and Jim’s personal life starts to fall apart, things spiral out of control. Soon, Jim—a teacher, mind you—be becomes unhealthily obsessed with cutting his student down to size, covertly backing a spoiler candidate to stop her from steamrolling to victory, and putting in motion a series of dirty tricks and reckless promises with uncanny real-world political parallels.

Adapting a then-unpublished novel by Tom Perrotta, Payne grounds the absurdity of his central dynamic in the recognizable – the setting is his hometown of Omaha, and the accomplished cast is rounded out with nonprofessionals – and distills his closely observed take on deeply flawed humanity to its bitter but stealthily sympathetic essence.

Criterion’s new editions of Election contain the following:

* New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised and approved by cowriter-director Alexander Payne, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray
* Audio commentary from 2008 featuring Payne
* New interview with Payne
* New interview with actor Reese Witherspoon
* The Passion of Martin, Payne’s 1991 UCLA senior thesis film
* TruInside: “Election,” a 2016 documentary featuring on-set footage and interviews with cast and crew
* Omaha local-news reports on the film’s production
* Trailer
* An essay by critic Dana Stevens