That '90s Uplift - Part I: The Spin Room

THE WAR ROOM (1993) (B+) - A new era dawned in 1992 when the Comeback Kid shrugged off his mistress's bombshell, stormed to second place in New Hampshire and then ran the table in the primaries before grabbing the presidency from a clueless, tongue-twisted Bush. Bill Clinton's campaign was run by a Felix-and-Oscar team of silver-tongued George Stephanopoulos and serpent-tongued James Carville.

This classic documentary from the legendary D.A. Pennebaker ("Don't Look Back") and Chris Hegedus ("Startup.com") leverages its deep access to provide an intimate glimpse inside the Little Rock hub of Clinton's ragtag collection of wonks. It preserves in amber the last presidential election of the analog age, one that rewrote the campaign playbook for everyone.

Stylewise, Pennebaker and Hegedus owe a great deal of debt to Robert Drew's landmark film "Primary," which employed the same fly-on-the-wall approach as he trailed John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey to VFW halls and church basements during another sea-change election. "The War Room" revels in quaint details of Americana and slathers the soundtrack with corny old political ditties, all the while acknowledging that Stephanopoulos and Carville were rewriting the rules of campaign strategy. As such, the film is a smart time capsule, but it also feels hopelessly out of date.

In a zippy 96 minutes, the filmmakers sprint through the entire primary season and the fall campaign, using newspaper headlines as shorthand to convey key plot points. They rely on sights and sounds and snippets of dialogue to move the narrative along to its happy ending on election night in November, when the staff were pinching themselves to make sure they weren't imagining it all.

Carville is the cover boy and the camera magnet. We get treated to the greatest hits ("It's the economy, stupid") but also to quieter scenes where he brainstorms strategy and counter-punches. He gets obsessed in late September with a video purporting to show Bush/Quayle campaign materials being manufactured in Brazil. He spitballs potential one-liners, including a few clunkers ("'Read my lips'? Nuh-uh, we're gonna read the facts!").

Stephanopoulos oozes that boyish charm as he scampers about, swimming in his cheap suits, snapping his gum -- he's 31 going on 13. We watch him handle the candidate expertly; he's a calming influence for Clinton, who is mostly an unseen character at the other end of the phone line.

Along with other faces now familiar as a generation of TV talking heads -- Paul Begala, Dee Dee Meyers, Mark Halperin, and rival Mary Matalin (with the charisma of a movie star here) -- the gang members ply their skills in a pre-digital world: landlines, a sluggish news cycle, conference tables plastered with daily newspapers. We listen in on strategy sessions and eavesdrop on the team members as they put out fires, craft clever comebacks, and invent the Spin Room.

Meantime, the filmmakers record random sights and sounds along the campaign trail. There's Gennifer Flowers seeming to sink Clinton with her shocking news conference (and smirking slyly at the infamous question about whether the candidate used a condom). Marching bands serenade crowds (including a brassy version of "Gimme Some Lovin"); line dancers boot-scoot to Bonnie Raitt's hit "Something to Talk About"); one rally's interpreter for the hearing impaired signs along to Van Morrison's "Domino"). The parties' conventions are utterly quaint. And, of course, there's the cartoon that was Ross Perot.

"The War Room" captures a specific moment in time, when the baby boomers completed their takeover of the culture, when the world was about to get much messier, zippier and complicated. In that battle for the White House, an oddball collection of strategists and foot soldiers bonded over a once-in-a-generation candidate surfing the zeitgeist.

Were they smart or just lucky? Clinton was the Natural, and he only had to squeak out 42 percent of the vote against Bush, a walking anachronism drowning in an economic downturn, and Perot, who siphoned votes from the president. When he finally rolls to victory on Election Day, the euphoria of his crew is contagious. It's something that can't be recaptured.

BONUS TRACK
"The War Room" has gotten the Criterion treatment. A second disc includes an 81-minute follow-up documentary that reunites the old gang to crow about their crowning achievement. It's a limp affair that adds little insight into the original film.