When a right hook to a baby’s face can win poll ratings, then one thing’s for sure: this has got to be an election year. And so, when the perfectly timed jab connects hard to one of those blue-eyed babies a parliamentary-hopeful kisses during his run for the office, one cannot help but spontaneously guffaw at The Campaign’s buffoonery of the political process — and its own overarching absurdity.

The right hook, featured prominently in the film’s trailer campaign, was launched by Cam Brady, a political good-for-nothing running for his fifth office term from a North Carolina district. Cam is played by Will Farrell, and for a healthy chunk of the film (read: all of it), he comes off as an outrageous farce.

His political rival is Marty Huggins, played by Zach Galifianakis, the film’s Mr Smith (of Mr Smith Goes to Washington). Marty is a small-town family man, of a plump family of four (although the screenplay doesn’t find the screen-time to say it, their family is bordering on an obesity problem), who runs a tourist office and dotes on his pet pair of pugs.

The pugs — and all of his family time — get replaced soon by Tim Wattley (Dylan McDermot), a mean-looking, black-suited man who champs-up Marty into a political, fighting machine. Tim is an excellent task-master, because soon we see Marty hoodwink Cam’s son to bad-mouth his father to a hidden-camera, while feeding him ice-cream on a bench.

Unknown to Marty though, is that he is rallied-up to run by the same corporate backers as Cam — a group run by fraternal, cigar-smoking billionaires played by Dan Aykroyd and John Lithgow in cameo-ish pop-up, who want to import cheap labor from China. Their plan is absurd, but then again, so is most of the screenplay by Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell (based on a story by Adam McKay, Henchy Harwell), which hops back-and-forth from Dave to Saturday Night Live, without a breather.

The Campaign’s lack of sensitivity — and lets not count out chicken-heartedness — limits its likeability in the long term. Often, I found myself chortling to its lampooning of the political-race system (Wolf Blitzer, Joe Scarborough, Bill Maher, Chris Matthews and Mika Brzezinski make cameos, announcing the candidate’s race status), and at the same time wishing that it would find a more stable foothold on its own material.

Belly laughs, bad words, satirical riffing — and sandwiched somewhere in between, a small smidgen of the ugly truth — can only take you so far. But then, again, it’s an election year… so I guess, everything goes.

Released by Warner Bros, The Campaign is directed by Jay Roach, and is rated R; it is inoffensive, despite featuring an ad-campaign running a sex-tape scandal, that mean right hook on a baby — and later to a celebrity dog.

Dredd-ful business

With an endless amount of bullets and body count, Dredd 3D hunts down injustice and kills it dead — along with the audience’s interest.

Somewhere in the dystopian future, the world rests in chaos of lawlessness. Quick judgment is the way to tackle it. The people who deal these judgments are a group of super cops called judges, who investigate, pursue and sentence criminals on the spot — meaning, mostly shoot them dead.

And because this is a film of a singular hero-type character, the meanest of them is Judge Dredd (Karl Urban).

Dredd is assigned with a rookie for evaluation. Anderson (Olivia Thirlby) — Dredd 3D’s wide eye innocent, mutant psychic, and the audiences’ only human connection. But then again, she’s the only one who can make the connection. For us, emotionally connecting with Dredd is out of the question, because his face is hidden behind a fortified helmet that only allows his sneering mouth space to growl at the world.

Anderson and Dredd are sent to uncover a new drug named Slo-Mo, which turn everything into slow motion for the user (seriously?!). It is being spread by Ma-Ma (Lena Headey), a real psycho, who deals brutally with foes and subordinates without prejudice. Dredd and Anderson get stuck-deep in a high-rise, fortified apartment complex that Ma-Ma locks down, and then orders a man-hunt for the two judges. Their only way out is up and through the reign of bullets.

Made from the 70’s UK comic book — once made into Sylvester Stallone’s flop Judge Dredd (1995) (Which I didn’t mind that much) — Dredd 3D is directed by Pete Travis, who tries his hand at cyberpunk sans kinetic energy and visual classiness. Travis gets fine support from Alex Garland’s weak script, with B-grade action and no build up. While we wait for the hero to — well, become a hero — he ends up just being a scowling guy with a mask and cool gun; even a better second half can’t help much with this dreadful experience.

Dredd 3D is released by Lionsgate and is rated R for concentrated violence, appended by low-budget sets, bad visual effects and a bad-tempered man’s scowl. Don’t expect a sequel. — Farheen Jawaid