This movie answers the question, "What would Ferris Bueller's Day Off be like if Ferris played Ed Rooney?" And if it was a dark comedy. Pitch-black dark. Thus began a string of critical and commercial successes for gifted writer-director Alexander Payne, which continued with the moving dramadies About Schmidt, Sideways, The Descendants, and last year's stark, black-and-white Nebraska. Casting the leads against type, Payne placed the usually harmless, if sometimes mischievous, Matthew Broderick as a vindictive, scheming civics teacher against the also scheming, though not vindictive, Reese Witherspoon, playing a know-it-all overachiever wrestling her way to class president - by any means necessary. The movie was a game changer in how both her and Broderick's talents were perceived, typecasting be damned. Payne continued this tradition by casting Saturday Night Live's Will Forte, MacGruber himself, in the aforementioned Nebraska.
Michael Perone has written for The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore City Paper, The Island Ear (now titled Long Island Press), and The Long Island Voice, a short-lived spinoff of The Village Voice. He currently works as an Editor in Manhattan. And he still thinks Michael Keaton was the best Batman.
