Wherefore art thou, Red-State Romeo?

The official summary for Conventioneers describes the movie as:

“…a Romeo- and-Juliet story of a Republican man who falls into a politically forbidden relationship with a Democrat woman who is protesting the Bush agenda. As the Convention draws near, one of her activist colleagues must reexamine his politics when he is hired as a sign language interpreter for the very man he’s working to defeat: President George W. Bush.”

The generically indie looking poster is positively drenched in lazy signifiers: It shows our studly, suit-wearing Republican male saturated in red and the tank-top clad, cigarette smoking, go-gettem feminist liberal lady similarly saturated in blue. The tagline is “a fair and balanced love story” (Ow! That’s so sharp it hurts! Fox News jokes never get old!).

Meanwhile, blog entries by the film’s creator start by mentioning the “blood, sweat and tears” she shed when the cops put her in jail for a night during filming at the New York Republican Convention. The actors are described in typical generic pablum—“brave and courageous”—and she hopes that the movie will be “a time capsule for that tumultuous moment in history,” whatever that means.

And then we have the trailer. Its pivotal line—“I’m here for the Republican Convention” (delivered with a 7-11 MegaMug of Southern boy Red State swagger)—is followed by one of those record scratch sounds that used to signal “whoa!” moments on cable children’s shows in the 80s but that you now find on every free sound effects download site on the internet. And, of course, it ends with a painfully generic montage of “ominously eccentric” convention footage.

Sure, I haven’t seen the movie, and it looks like it’s won some awards and praise from a few folks who aren’t necessarily total cinematic morons, so it’s always possible that there’s really something there besides the pasty vanilla "balance," the self-impressed platitudes, and the blinkered shallowness that soak through every bit of its advertising. Of course it’s also possible that the next David Lynch film will be a straight narrative feature, that Ezra Klein will become a principled religious conservative, that Harry Knowles will start writing brilliant, concise criticism, or that Daniel Larison will go a month without a blog post, but I’ll believe all those things when I see them.