Topical, pot-stirring political melodrama in the vein of Advise and Consent. In fact it tells the same story (pruned of subplots and subordinate characters), with the slight difference that whereas that one was about the midterm nomination of a new Secretary of State, this one is about the nomination of a Vice President: the first-ever female one (not counting the fictional V.P. in Air Force One), provided she can survive the mortifying confirmation process and the bubbling scandal of an indiscreet sexcapade during her freshman year in college. As in the older movie, certain figures will grow in stature and others will shrink, though in the newer one the patterns of growth and shrinkage are more standardized and predictable, more loudly accompanied by the sounds of axe-grinding. When the devoted wife of the chief villain steps out of line to say, "This is an ideological rape of all women," we are not meant to shake our heads at her vulgar rhetoric. (The villain, for easier identification, is physically off-putting to boot: Gary Oldman with math-nerd eyeglasses and plucked-chicken bald spots.) Diverting enough on a trashy, tabloid, Rivera Live sort of level, the movie is more genuinely compelling in its early stages, prior to the growth spurts, when the eventual heroes seem nothing more than purebred political animals, cold-blooded, calculating, self-conscious, self-inflated, subhuman, androidal. Joan Allen, who doubtless studied tape of Hillary Clinton, has the manner down pat as the starchy U.S. Senator on the hot seat; and Jeff Bridges, although undermined a little by his youthfulness, is intermittently amusing as the Chief Executive whose most cherished power is his room-service hotline to the White House kitchen. Both performances sag, however, at the precise point that the characters swell: Allen in her ringing final remarks to the confirmation committee, a litany of liberal pieties cheered on by the patriotic background music; and Bridges in his big speech, similarly cheered on, to the joint houses of Congress. The rhetorical showboating, by now feeding off its own momentum, rolls on beyond the movie proper to the closing dedication: "For Our Daughters." Taking ourselves a tad seriously, are we? With Christian Slater, Sam Elliott, William Petersen; written and directed by Rod Lurie. (2000) — Duncan Shepherd