Garnering almost 90% in popular support president Tomasz Wiecek (Piotr Gasowski) is comfortably heading for a second in office. He has no real rivals to oppose him, so grows increasingly lax and reckless, amongst others having a sexual affair with his assistant Kamila (Joanna Liszowska). This is turn causes a growing divide between him and his family. The bubble finally bursts, when his wife Junona Wiecek (Grazyna Wolszczak) decides that enough is enough and embarks on a presidential campaign opposite her husband.
A comedy, which must have seemed a brilliant idea during the pitch (surprisingly an idea no one in the United States picked up on after the Clinton affair), but is a monstrous dud with severe underlying misogynistic issues. Instead of humour focused on situational drama and a proper story, we are served a helping of absurdity ad infinitum. With outdated humour heavily laden by influence of decades past the absurd is banal and counterproductive. Comedy does base itself strongly on exaggeration, unmasking the inherent absurdities of a given situation or idea . The trick is however not to go overboard (unless you have the imbecilic ingenious touch of Monty Python), else the joke turns on itself to harakiri any potential of laughter. This overdose of extrapolating crammed into "Zamiana" derails the base storyline, while at the same time managing to deliver a chauvinistic undertone - a man losing self-confidence starts turning into a women, while a female finding inner strength and gaining political ambitions starts becoming masculine.
This sexist turn of events pretty much speaks volume about the director. While supposedly jabbing at polish promiscuity and political absurdities, the biggest victim is director Konrad Aksymowicz, who comes off as a bit of a jerk. That said the movie does manage to pull off a relatively crisp and involving culmination, which manages to slightly overt total disaster.
Production value is extremely high, which shows how much money was spitfired into this waste of space. Unfortunately partly sponsored by public money.
