Man of the Year
Man of the Year is a sure-fire, topical, relevant Robin Williams comedic vehicle that simply sputters due to the wrong kind of fuel. Director Barry Levinson seems completely at home with the lightly amusing fable of a Stewart-esque cable-comedy icon named Tom Dobbs who runs as an independent candidate for President. Yet Levinson invests far too much of the movie’s second half in attempting to dramatize a software engineer’s secrets about malfunctioning voting machines.
“One thing leads to another,” says a wheelchair-bound Christopher Walken as Dobbs’ manager Jack Mencken. Indeed.
And casting Robin Williams inevitably leads to the comedian’s trademark improvisational stream-of-consciousness flourishes. When they work—as in Aladdin, Patch Adams, or the Levinson-directed Good Morning, Vietnam—they work extremely well. When they don’t click or when Williams is clearly being shackled—think Popeye, the Levinson-helmed Toys, or even Hook—you feel almost sorry for the poor guy. The way Levinson’s script for Man of the Year is written, Williams has no choice but to come down somewhere in the middle. Much of the time, Dobbs downplays his comedic shtick while stumping, and that means a muted Williams. Without the film’s early scenes of Dobbs-as-comedy-host, I’m not so sure much of the audience would stick around to see Dobbs finally cut loose during the debates.
See? The plot is really simple. Comedic TV celebrity declares candidacy, hits the road, makes some speeches, makes some waves, and then… Well, I don’t want to ruin the movie for those really want to enjoy the film when they see it, because much of the film’s limited charm comes from the way in which the election plays out.
But that second step—the comic hitting the road for some serious politics—leads away from sheer comedy and into drama. One thing does lead to another, and Levinson’s drama then dips into melodrama and sheer improbability.
Levinson’s misstep, if one can call it that, is in taking his politics so seriously. He desperately wants to question the Red-State / Blue-State talking-head cable-news nonsense that has gripped the country. And, in my humble opinion, he’s right to. He’s just not comfortable, apparently, in turning loose Williams to make the point through comedy. Dobbs must pontificate in real, responsible ways about real-world political issues—and then we must cast doubt upon our nation’s ability to conduct an honest election.
Really? Must we?
Man of the Year posits a fictional technology company named Delacroy that profits handsomely from manufacturing automated voting machines. When project lead Eleanor Green (played by the winning Laura Linney, not doing her best work here) discovers a bug in the system’s vote-tallying algorithm, Delecroy’s CEO opts for profits over integrity. The company’s naturally shady attorney (played effortlessly by Jeff Goldblum) advises Green to simply work on fixing things for the future; the current election “is the past.” The illusion of a functioning democracy, he says, is more important than actual votes.
Now, if this half of the story were being played for laughs—for even a single chuckle—I could probably live with it. But Levinson played it deadly straight, which is a huge problem.
First, as Dobbs’ writer observes, “fiction needs to be credible,” and this subplot is not. The kind of software mistake that Delacroy’s system makes could only have been coded by a fifth-grade—no, make that third-grade—monkey. A suitable analogy would be to discover that a checkout-stand scanner mischarged your purchases based on digits in the package’s nutrition information. This is just preposterous silliness—and yet just credible enough to feed the public’s natural (and recently justified) mistrust of our country’s voting process. Personally, I find Levinson’s script almost criminally irresponsible in this regard, not unlike crying “fire” in a crowded theatre. Hopefully, audiences won’t take this subplot as seriously as Levinson and Linney do.
Second, as Mencken advises Dobbs, there’s “a lot of lead-in here. Get to the punchline.” An audience coming to see Man of the Year based on its advance publicity is going to chafe at the bait-and-switch. For a comedy, the movie has precious few laughs from the start, and almost none down the stretch.
Aside from die-hard Williams fans, and folks looking for absolutely anything but partisan bickering in the way of entertaining political commentary, I’m honestly not sure who will find this movie compelling. And I hate to say that of any well-intentioned movie, particularly one with Walken or Williams, or one directed by Levinson.
Man of the Year is rated PG-13 for “language including some crude sexual references, drug related material, and brief violence”—basically, for Robin Williams being Robin Williams. It’s a fair rating. If Robin normally offends you, he’ll offend you here, too. If you normally find him riotous, well, there’s a few of those moments in this film—but not many.
“One thing leads to another,” says a wheelchair-bound Christopher Walken as Dobbs’ manager Jack Mencken. Indeed.
And casting Robin Williams inevitably leads to the comedian’s trademark improvisational stream-of-consciousness flourishes. When they work—as in Aladdin, Patch Adams, or the Levinson-directed Good Morning, Vietnam—they work extremely well. When they don’t click or when Williams is clearly being shackled—think Popeye, the Levinson-helmed Toys, or even Hook—you feel almost sorry for the poor guy. The way Levinson’s script for Man of the Year is written, Williams has no choice but to come down somewhere in the middle. Much of the time, Dobbs downplays his comedic shtick while stumping, and that means a muted Williams. Without the film’s early scenes of Dobbs-as-comedy-host, I’m not so sure much of the audience would stick around to see Dobbs finally cut loose during the debates.
See? The plot is really simple. Comedic TV celebrity declares candidacy, hits the road, makes some speeches, makes some waves, and then… Well, I don’t want to ruin the movie for those really want to enjoy the film when they see it, because much of the film’s limited charm comes from the way in which the election plays out.
But that second step—the comic hitting the road for some serious politics—leads away from sheer comedy and into drama. One thing does lead to another, and Levinson’s drama then dips into melodrama and sheer improbability.
Levinson’s misstep, if one can call it that, is in taking his politics so seriously. He desperately wants to question the Red-State / Blue-State talking-head cable-news nonsense that has gripped the country. And, in my humble opinion, he’s right to. He’s just not comfortable, apparently, in turning loose Williams to make the point through comedy. Dobbs must pontificate in real, responsible ways about real-world political issues—and then we must cast doubt upon our nation’s ability to conduct an honest election.
Really? Must we?
Man of the Year posits a fictional technology company named Delacroy that profits handsomely from manufacturing automated voting machines. When project lead Eleanor Green (played by the winning Laura Linney, not doing her best work here) discovers a bug in the system’s vote-tallying algorithm, Delecroy’s CEO opts for profits over integrity. The company’s naturally shady attorney (played effortlessly by Jeff Goldblum) advises Green to simply work on fixing things for the future; the current election “is the past.” The illusion of a functioning democracy, he says, is more important than actual votes.
Now, if this half of the story were being played for laughs—for even a single chuckle—I could probably live with it. But Levinson played it deadly straight, which is a huge problem.
First, as Dobbs’ writer observes, “fiction needs to be credible,” and this subplot is not. The kind of software mistake that Delacroy’s system makes could only have been coded by a fifth-grade—no, make that third-grade—monkey. A suitable analogy would be to discover that a checkout-stand scanner mischarged your purchases based on digits in the package’s nutrition information. This is just preposterous silliness—and yet just credible enough to feed the public’s natural (and recently justified) mistrust of our country’s voting process. Personally, I find Levinson’s script almost criminally irresponsible in this regard, not unlike crying “fire” in a crowded theatre. Hopefully, audiences won’t take this subplot as seriously as Levinson and Linney do.
Second, as Mencken advises Dobbs, there’s “a lot of lead-in here. Get to the punchline.” An audience coming to see Man of the Year based on its advance publicity is going to chafe at the bait-and-switch. For a comedy, the movie has precious few laughs from the start, and almost none down the stretch.
Aside from die-hard Williams fans, and folks looking for absolutely anything but partisan bickering in the way of entertaining political commentary, I’m honestly not sure who will find this movie compelling. And I hate to say that of any well-intentioned movie, particularly one with Walken or Williams, or one directed by Levinson.
Man of the Year is rated PG-13 for “language including some crude sexual references, drug related material, and brief violence”—basically, for Robin Williams being Robin Williams. It’s a fair rating. If Robin normally offends you, he’ll offend you here, too. If you normally find him riotous, well, there’s a few of those moments in this film—but not many.
posted by Greg Wright at 5:09 AM
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