Molly tries various schemes to get her dad to shape up. One is to involve him in her homework. For a civics assignment, she intends to follow him to the voting booth. But he gets drunk and doesn't show, and she ends up voting in his place, just before the polling place closes.
An important vote, as it turns out.
It's a close national election, New Mexico is the swing state and, for various reasons, Bud's 11th-hour vote looms as the deciding tally: The machine didn't read the vote, and he must cast it again in two weeks.
During that interval, the media descends on his trailer and he becomes a national celebrity courted by both candidates (Kelsey Grammer, Dennis Hopper) and discussed by the usual cable pundits (who appear in cameos, proving again they say "No" less often than Heidi Fleiss).
This is pitched as very broad comedy, and Costner plays Bud as a lovable loser - "Tin Cup" without the low handicap.
But is he lovable? Director and co-writer Joshua Stern wants to invest "Swing Vote" with emotional substance and so colors the father-daughter relationship with real pain, real resentment.
The more real it gets, the more loutish Bud seems. The movie gets a little too real when daughter rides off to find her drug-addicted mom (Mare Winningham) and finds that Alice doesn't live here anymore.
With his daughter gone, Bud turns introspective, leading to a mea culpa about how he has ducked responsibilities - to his family and to his country.
The fault is not with our [political stars, "Swing Vote" implies, but with ourselves. Bud hails the two candidates as great men - a bit of a problem, since the movie has spent roughly an hour establishing them as unprincipled panderers.
More troubling is the way the movie suggests there is something iconic about Bud. If this is Everyman (and why else cast Costner?), he's enough to make you think twice about democracy. *
Produced by Jim Wilson, Kevin Costner, directed by Joshua Stern, written by Joshua Stern and Jason Richman, music by John Debney, distributed by Walt Disney Studios.
