Introducing two great talents - Witherspoon and Payne - in Election

The 1999 film Election was a debut of sorts for both a great actor, Reese Witherspoon, and a great director, Alexander Payne, and we see from this film, which holds up perfectly as a high-school comedy with many sorrowful, painful, and truthful dimensions, the Witherspoon was bound to become a star playing many type-A characters like Tracy Flick - the driven, focused, independent, but friendless candidate for school president - and that Payne was bound to become one of our best story-driven directors. In fact, I think he's the best working director at adaptation of literary fiction (this one based on a Tom Perotta novel - just Perotta's Little Children for an example of how not to adapt literary fiction). I think Payne's excellent Nebraska (the setting for Election several other Payne films as well) was his first from an original screenplay. In short, the story is tight, consistent, well-paced, and well acted y W and others, notably Matthew Broderick in the lead as the faculty adviser who gets caught up and caught in election shenanigans - and in the complexities of his own marital infidelities. The lead characters in Election are not generally likable (though some of the peripheral ones are, notably Paul, the dull-witted popular athlete whom Broderick draws into the election fray), but for the most part we sympathize with them. How can you imagine liking Witherspoon/Flick, with her hand thrust high into the air in class - call on me, call on me! - yet how can we not feel sorry for her, when we see her up all night printing campaign material, and at home sobbing in her room after she loses her bid? On the other hand, the movie is a little light, by today's standards, on the mis-doings of the faculty members, particularly the sleazy guy who has an affair with Witherspoon/Flick - she's not only his student but she's under age! - and is quietly shoved out of his job, when he should probably be imprisoned. Flick seems so strong, but she's actually very vulnerable - fatherless, only child, lonely, and exactly the kind of young woman predators often victimize. Though very funny and even slapstick at times, this film is far more, far deeper than a raucous high-school comedy and still worth a look.