MAN OF THE YEAR
Universal Pictures
Rated PG-13
THE VERDICT:
Williams’ poor delivery of awful jokes trashes the potential of the film while a horrible thriller sub-plot further destroys all chances for the film’s success.
1.5/4 stars
“The free world will now be led by a comedian.”
That’s the simple, squandered premise of the new Barry Levinson/Robin Williams film “Man of the Year,” which has been marketed as a comedy, though identifying which genre the film should call home is no easy task. It’s many things and none – a comedy without laughs, a satire without a target, a drama without genuine emotion and a thriller that wouldn’t startle an infant.
Tom Dobbs (Williams) hosts a popular late-night comedy news program a la “The Daily Show,” and one night an audience member proposes that the political-minded jester should make a run for the U.S. presidency. His manager (Christopher Walken) smells great publicity, but Dobbs senses an even greater opportunity. What if he won?
He hits the road as an independent, winning fans coast to coast by telling the truth and thumbing his nose at the other candidates and their platforms. He turns a televised debate into a sideshow, grandstanding and telling stale jokes about everything from Enron to hydrogen cars, and somehow the effort wins him the Oval Office.
One of the worst things about the film is the way it stands by Williams’ endless riffing as though it were actually funny. Roomfuls of supporting actors earn their paychecks in this film by laughing hollowly as Williams adopts terrible foreign accents and prances about trying to assert his character’s touted outrageousness. A sample joke about freedom of religion: You can choose to be a Buddhist or a Jew, or both. “You just sit and you wait for things to go on sale.”
Ha ha ha, ugh. Dobbs’ jokes wouldn’t work in the Catskills, much less on a national television show aimed at a hip, young audience.
There’s also a fine speech about the danger of television that basically goes nowhere. “TV scares me,” says Walken. “It makes everything seem credible. If everything is credible, nothing is credible.”
What does it say about America that more citizens now get their news from late-night comedians than from actual reporters? That’s an idea far too smart for this film, so director Levinson and company drop it like a hot potato.
And none of Dobbs’ political huffing and puffing is the least bit convincing. His campaign team worries that his unmarried status will hurt his chances, yet no one seems to notice that he has no platform. His speeches run down “hot topic” laundry lists of what’s wrong with America – gay marriage controversies, illegal immigration, corporate corruption, homeland security – yet he never offers anything close to a solution for any of these problems.
He instead pushes “I’m OK, you’re OK” malarkey about how great the nation used to be and could be again. “Democracy,” he says, “is a collision of ideas.” OK, but how does that keep oil prices stable and stop global warming? “We have a lot to live up to,” he ponderously drones on. “I think we can do it. I know we can do it.” And we’re supposed to believe that that last speech brings Congress to its feet?
Compounding the film’s already thin believability is a “thriller” subplot with Laura Linney as a would-be whistle blower within a software company responsible for an electronic ballot system that miscounted votes in the election. It turns out Dobbs didn’t win after all, and she has to speak up about it and her company’s culpability in the fiasco. But the company, embodied by Jeff Goldblum (very good, actually, with his menacing stares and machine gun delivery) wants to keep her quiet by any means necessary.
So you get scenes of Linney wandering around her dark apartment in her PJs, struggling with her increasingly dull moral quandary while company muscle lurks just around the next corner. Then, unknowingly high on everything from Benzedrine to cocaine, she wigs out at a coffee counter, screaming “Are you touching my things?!” Though Linney plays this nonsense with all the commitment and professionalism that could be expected, what movie is she in? What does this have to do with bestiality jokes and Williams in a powdered wig?
The plots converge, there’s an obligatory romance, and Walken’s character gets sidelined by emphysema (ha?). The humor is inconsistent, and Levinson never finds a tone worth sticking with for more than a scene at a time.
Yet the movie lives and dies, and dies some more, on Williams’ performance, which is just not convincing enough to make the blasted thing fly. No longer the live wire he was in 1986, Williams is better suited to play loneliness and melancholy at his age, and his reckless flailing for laughs feels more desperate with each new “comedy” he stoops to headline.
For all Williams’ vigorous mugging, he can’t make Dobbs’ jokes funny. “Man of the Year” doesn’t work on numerous levels. Don’t believe its campaign promises. They’re pure Hollywood bunk.