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Man of the Year Our rating: Rate this movie   Your Comments: see all MPAA rating: PG-13 (for language including some crude sexual references, drug related material, and brief violence) Genre: Comedy, Political Theater release: October 13, 2006 by Universal Pictures Directed by: Barry Levinson Runtime: 2 hours Cast: Robin Williams (Tom Dobbs), Laura Linney (Eleanor Green), Christopher Walken (Jack Menken), Lewis Black (Eddie Langston), Jeff Goldblum (Alan Stewart), David Alpay (Danny), Tina Fey (herself), Amy Poehler (herself) Related: Talk About It/Family Corner

Man of the Year is the third film that Robin Williams and director Barry Levinson have worked on together. Their first—made nearly 20 years ago—was Good Morning, Vietnam, one of the first and most successful showcases for Williams' brand of improvisational humor, and in its own way a thoughtful and intelligent study of the relationship between comedy and the grim seriousness of world events. Their second was the wacky, noisy, charming, alarming, and ultimately disappointing Toys. In terms of quality or entertainment value, their newest collaboration falls somewhere between the first two; it is not as potentially off-putting as Toys, but it also falls short of the political or dramatic resonance of their first joint effort.

The new film's premise is certainly timely enough. In a time when many people turn to variety shows and comedians like Jon Stewart and Bill Maher for their "news," and when celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger can launch successful political campaigns on talk shows hosted by the likes of Jay Leno, this film asks what might happen if one of these televised funnymen—in this case, Robin Williams, or at least a character played by him named Tom Dobbs—were to run for office himself.

Comedian-turned-candidate Tom Dobbs (Robin Williams) speaks to a star-struck public

What's more, the film is smart enough to recognize that Dobbs would probably not win, no matter how large his fan base is or how many names appeared on an Internet petition supporting his candidacy; think of televangelist Pat Robertson's brief run for the presidency in 1988, or of Snakes on a Plane, which somehow failed to turn months and months of grassroots online hype into actual ticket sales.

The thing is, while Dobbs does not, in fact, win a majority of the actual votes, he does "win" the election, due to a glitch in the computers that count the votes. And he is popular enough that no one really questions whether this dark horse really did win the race. Only a few people know about the error—namely Eleanor Green (Laura Linney, excellent as ever), an employee at the firm that designed the machines, and her bosses, who go to extreme lengths to shut her up, not because they care who runs the country but because her whistle-blowing could hurt their rising profits. (One of these bosses is a lawyer played by an appropriately slick Jeff Goldblum, who overwhelms Eleanor with a torrent of words, before trying other tactics.)

Dobbs and his manager Jack Menken (Christopher Walken) play a game of chess

Thus the film sets in motion a plot that is more thriller than comedy, and thus the film squanders some of the opportunities it has to do something interesting with its central gimmick. Dobbs and his campaign are all but forgotten as scenes of Eleanor pacing about her living room, or freaking out at the company's cafeteria, drag on long enough to make you wonder what happened to the other characters. Eventually Eleanor decides the only person who will believe her story about the computer glitch is Dobbs himself, so she worms her way into his inner circle—with surprising ease—and then, before she can spill the beans, she and Dobbs start falling in love.

For a political satire, Man of the Year is surprisingly light on political content. Does Dobbs have a vice-presidential candidate? Apparently he does, because someone asks him what his veep-in-waiting thought about something, but we never meet the guy. And what is the reaction to Dobbs's candidacy on the world stage? The film never tells us, which is a startling omission, given how much of the president's job involves dealing with other nations, and given how central world affairs are to election campaigns in real life. (Remember how, in 2000, people complained that George W. Bush had never left Texas and didn't know his world leaders?)

Voting analyst Eleanor Green (Laura Linney) has some insider information for Dobbs

There are also some puzzling paradoxes, like the way Dobbs rails against both the Republicans and Democrats for being too "partisan," yet the reason people rally behind Dobbs is because he's the only one who says anything "different" from the two major parties. (At the televised debate, one of the two big-party candidates expresses his full agreement with the other big-party candidate, and is never seen disagreeing with him in any substantial way.) There may be ways to explain this seeming contradiction, but the film barely seems to even notice it.

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