Man of the Year

I have a lot of respect for Robin Williams' talent, even though I don't much care for the films he chooses to do. Even frantic, talented people can have rather pedestrian tastes. "Man of the Year" is the latest case in point.

A popular political comedian decides to throw his hat into the Presidential ring, a company wins a bid to develop the program that will "simplfy" the American voting process, and a diligent computer programmer discovers a glitch in the new software that results in the aforementioned comedian's immenent presidency. You would think this would be enough to give momentum to the story. You would think Robin Williams, Laura Linney and Christopher Walken would be able to move even a crappy script forward. Christopher Walken makes a lot of crap, but he's always fascinating, right? Well, this is a notable exception. Somehow Barry Levinson waved a magic wand and made not only the conflict dull- but Robin Williams sedate and, well, unfunny. Williams, Linney and Walken are all highly credible in their performances, but something vital is missing. It was almost as if Levinson had set up the circumstances and asked the performers to just live by them and then systematically edited out all the interesting parts leaving only shot after shot of campaign caravans and presidential motorcades. Enough with the driving already!

This film has all the self important fingerprints of a Hollywood agenda film. There was once a time when an agenda film actually said what it meant without all the back peddaling and kow towing. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Meet John Doe, Sullivan's Travels- these are all important, and highly watchable films. Unfortunately, I will be filing this one next to obnoxious, poorly constructed tripe like Bulworth and The Contender. Don't get me started.

First of all, there are extreme efforts taken to not point fingers at anyone. In the film, the glitch is a mistake and no one intended to thwart the election, but it clearly needed to be covered up to save the company's financial future. The sitting president is a Democrat, just to keep people from thinking this little film about voter fraud bears any similarity to any persons living or dead. Yeah. They fooled me. Second, Robin Williams' angry comedian performance feels restrained while poor Lewis Black's tirades are set free only when there is some other more pressing piece of business to distract us from what he is saying. Levinson missed every potential interesting moment by about a mile.

Oh, wait, there is one exception. Laura Linney's character, Eleanor, returns home after a confrontation with her boss's lawyer and then hears an odd noise. This was properly suspenseful. I knocked my soda over when the hired goon finally attacked her. She should have been dead, but like every other punch in this film Levinson pulled it. He was so intent on not making this a mystery that he completely avoided a series of interesting, revealing moments in favor of a two hour diatribe about the importance of being involved regardless of the inevitablility of human error. It seems to me that what this film really advocates is the status quo.

The film opens up with Christopher Walken telling the story to somebody of how this all transpired. I had hoped that, maybe, just maybe, Williams' character had been killed for exposing the truth about the system. Nah. That doesn't happen. Nobody dies. Nobody's life is ruined. In the end everyone goes back to their lives and Williams and Linney play out their prerequisite romance. This film has absolutely nothing to say and takes about two hours to say it.

Well, the popcorn was delicious.