“The most fun you will ever have watching a baby getting socked in the face.”

Jay Roach’s “The Campaign” is really funny, but it’s also two different movies.  The first is hilarious, and deals with Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis), who appears to live virtually every stereotype that accompanies being queer, and yet he (somehow) manages not to be.

I wished that the movie played more with the whole ‘fish out of water’ angle longer, because once we are introduced to Huggins, the emphasis begins to shift from his, pardon the pun, queer behavior to the political rivalry between him and Cam Brady (Will Ferrell).

Luckily there are enough great supporting characters, including John Lithgow, Dan Aykroyd, Brian Cox, among many others, to compensate for any weakness from the main characters.

And speaking of supporting characters, Mrs. Yao (Karen Maruyama) is Jay Roach’s secret weapon.  She’s as funny, if not funnier, than either Galifianakis or Ferrell, and manages to do so in a manner that is smarter than just about anything in this movie has a right to be.

The second movie, that revolves around the political rivalry between Huggins and Brady,  isn’t quite as funny though the ‘shotgun approach’ to comedy is employed, which means that you throw a whole bunch of stuff at the screen, with the hope that something sticks.

Director Jay Roach wears his politics on his sleeve, and there are some obvious references to the Koch Brothers, as well as voting machines influencing an election, but it goes down easily enough though this movie will go down in history as being the first–that I am aware of–to deck a baby, though there’s probably the most awkward (and uncomfortable) French kiss in history to compete with it.