The new on demand movie “Irresistible” is both written and directed by John Stewart, and my first question is, why is this movie even called Irresistible? This title makes no sense, considering what this movie is about. The story of Irresistible is about the political process in this country, that is all about raising money and back stabbing and bad mouthing the other side. Its about the system being broken and is all about money and not about changing things for the better. The problem here is that the point of this film is lost in Stewart’s attempts to be different and because of this, most of this entire film does not make any sense.

First of all, why would a high level political operative, Gary Zimmer (played by Steve Carell), who works in Washington D.C. ever care about a small town Mayoral race in Wisconsin? This would never happen, so why not make Zimmer more local to Wisconsin?

The movie starts with Zimmer seeing a speech during town hall of a former army Colonel Jack Hastings, played by Chris Cooper and because of this one speech, Zimmer believes he would be a great candidate for mayor of a small conservative town in Wisconsin. What follows are mostly unfunny and disjointed scenes of a political campaign and even a trip to New York City to get funding for this mayoral race, in what turns out to be millions of dollars. Why would rich people in New York City give a great deal of money to fund a mayoral campaign for a small town in Wisconsin? There are several other scenes in this movie that looked like Stewart was trying too hard to be different, including one scene where an injured army veteran was dressed up and talked like a robot, because of his many strokes. I thought this was not only unfunny, but in very bad taste. The campaign manager Faith Brewster for the current mayor, played by Rose Byrne has an ongoing love hate relationship with Zimmer, and most of their scenes also fail pretty badly and are never funny.

The ending included the conclusion of an ongoing scam with the town, that did not work and was completely implausible. The ending is another attempt by Stewart to try something different that also failed. I had the feeling throughout watching this film that any new screenwriter would never get this screenplay made into a movie because it was just not strong enough. Only because of John Stewart’s clout was this movie pushed forward and financed.

My other question is that why are these on demand first run movies so expensive to buy at $19.99? You would think that because the movie has no distribution costs that it would be cheaper to make. Perhaps the producers believe that the only way to recoup enough money is to charge a ridiculously high price for a movie you can see in your home. Given that Irresistible is not a good movie, paying 19.99 is even more annoying for all who will see this film.

I agree with the very low 42% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and recommend this movie should be avoided to save the $19.99. John Stewart is very funny as a talk show host and a talented comedian and it must be hard for him to get all of these bad reviews. Sometimes it is better to not make a bad movie rather than produce something just to try and stay relevant in Hollywood.