People are voting emotionally.

One of the best films i have seen

There is just so much movie here. For some it may be too much. But in the same secretly sarcastic way most telemarketers say the phrase, the title of this one is particularly apt.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Eddie Murphy is a man capable of high energy humor, and is efficient with his broad smile, mimics and impersonations. And this movie gives him some great moments especially in the beginning.Eddie Murphy starts as a Florida con 'artist' accompanied by some accomplices blackmailing people who use his private fake phone-sex service. While racketing a congressman, he finds out that running for Congress will earn him more money than he does now. His asset to get elected is his name which he shares with a just-deceased congressman called Jeff Johnson. His way to the top of course hardly meets any difficulty but, after all, this is a comedy so we don't mind as long as it's entertaining.But then things go wrong, Johnson meets a Pro Bono lobbyist, falls in love with her pretty fast but their relationship doesn't add anything to the movie and is not developed and chemistry between both actors is obviously missing.First, Johnson enjoys his journey at the Congress but he soon realizes he can't keep a straight face and simultaneously take part to the different frauds and corruption present.This is where the movie takes a turn for the serious and forgets it started out as a comedy. It's now trying to make a point. Johnson accepts to help a town where children are submitted to the negative effects of power high lines causing a great deal of them to suffer from cancer. Johnson develops a plan to force Congress to do something and expose publicly the aforementioned frauds and corruption. All this is done in an unexplainable cheesy way.Shame, as the movie contained some good ideas for a comedy but director Jonathan Lynn seems to have been distracted and forgot that his original intention was to make a good comedy with Eddie Murphy having a good time at Congress.

I agree with some of the comments made here, and disagree with others. For those of us who were looking for the usual Eddie Murphy, you will not find him here. While watching this movie on T.V., I went to IMDb to find out more. I saw that COMEDY was not one of the genres listed for this movie. At first, I thought that nobody had added it yet, that is until I saw the whole movie. I believe it may have been an attempt for Eddie Murphy to explore a serious character-role for a change. I think he did a great job!! Although he was not cracking us up with jokes and impersonations (but he did do a few on the phone to get important information), he was still entertaining to watch. Also, the political side of the story may not have been true-to-life, but it does give the laymen (and laywomen) an idea of some of the games the big-wigs play in the United States of Americow.

Thomas Jefferson Johnson is a small time con artist who realises the money in politics when he overhears Congressman Jeff Johnson during one of his scams. When the Congressman dies between his secretary's legs in his office while "poling the electorate" Thomas sees his opportunity. Dropping his first name in the hope that name recognition will see him through, Thomas and his crew go to work and it is not long before they slide their way to Washington. Once in town he gets on the gravy train straight away – joining his colleagues in Congress, he is soon up to his neck in contributions and fund raisers but is this really what it is all about?Although it starts out with plenty of big, easy targets the first half of the film is lively and quite funny. The broad satire is never that cutting or intelligent but it does the job for an Eddie Murphy comedy. Unfortunately, around the halfway mark the obvious plot suddenly has Thomas develop a heart and the film grinds to a halt. Happily it gets its senses back in the final section and is a return to the lively first part – this is not to say that it is brilliant because it isn't, but it is amusing and pretty enjoyable apart from the narrative arch having a massive hole in the middle of it.The cast are mixed dependant on their material. Murphy himself is on good form. His con artist character suits his on screen personae and he works the dialogue really well – he is all at sea when he has to convince the audience of the change in his character but he moves through that as quickly as he can. The supporting cast are all in his shadow on this but at least there are plenty of famous faces. Smith, Dutton, McBride, Baker, Ralph and McCarthy all add an ensemble feel to the film even if it is very much Murphy's vehicle. Lynn's direction is OK but he can't do much of real intelligence with the basic tools presented to him by the writers.Overall this is not the sharpest of satires but the big simple targets are still enjoyably hit. The middle section is poor but Murphy ensures that the majority of it will be good enough to please his fans even if it could have been so much better.

...that the movies premise about power lines being linked to cancer turned out to be wrong. I enjoyed the movie when I first saw it but the end just grates on me now, as the bad guys are actually right and the good guys are the ones who want to spend millions of dollars fixing a non-existent problem. Oh, well. The opening part of the film is still funny, and matches up pretty good with how I expect politics to be like in real life.Still funny, just a shame that history has changed the moral of the story to - don't trust the well meaning caring people, the crooked politicians have it right.