I think we watch Robin Williams like we watch car accidents.? We want to see the gas tank explode.? We want to see someone rushing in to start using the jaws of life.? Will the driver take off across the median, running, bleeding and on fire?? We want excitement and chaos and things that don’t happen every day.
We want to see and know and have confirmed that Robin Williams can’t not be funny.? Sure, we know that he makes serious movies from time to time, but that’s different.? In a comedy, we want to see unbridled hilarity from the man.
Which is what makes this movie hard to advocate. He’s funny, and then he’s not.
Tom Dobbs is a funny guy who has his own TV show.? He is convinced to run for President, as an anti-candidate.? It seems that some portion of the American population is unhappy with the parties and the candidates, with the special interests and ads and campaign funding, with the sad state of political affairs in (movie-land) America.
Wow.? Where’d they come up with that idea?
And he somehow gets on the ballot in 13 states, even though he runs no ads and relies wholly on free.? An Open Source candidate, almost.
And a serious candidate.? Under federal laws, of course, he has to take leave from his TV show.? And apparently from being funny, because as he travels the country campaigning, he talks seriously about the serious issues.? The funny guy, being serious.
Which was almost enough to get me to turn the movie off.? It’d be like going to the carnival to watch midgets juggle chain saws, and out comes the Amish quilt brigade to show off their wares or UNICEF parading starving kids and passing the donation cup.
There’s the whole other sub plot, about the electronic voting system that the government is bringing online.? Whatever.? He somehow gets elected President.? Then there’s this whole quasi love interest part of the movie, a little paranoia throw in for good measure, and low and behold, we find out that he’s not really the guy who got the most votes.
Like President Bush in 2004.
If Dobbs had gotten the electoral vote and not the popular vote, I suspect he would have stayed on as President, and mocked the system all the more for it.? It would have been an interesting movie if it had ended with him actually being sworn in — make it a franchise, with a movie for each of his years of the Presidency.? Harry Potter, but funny and political.
Anyway, that’s just an aside.? The long and the short of it is that he does the right thing and backs out, forcing a re-vote in which he does not participate.
Deep down, I think the main theme of this movie is about integrity, and the appearance that American politics is becoming void of it.? Special interests and money get a black eye in Man of the Year, and for good cause.? If more people did what was right, there’d be no need for Dobbs to run.? There’d be no spark of truth in a candidate like Dobbs.
Do what’s right, always.
One last note.? Laura Linney will never be a lead actress.? I hope she’s OK with this.? She was good in Dave, she was good in Congo. She was good in Breach, which was a dog of a movie that I should probably write up and mock to no end.? I can neither confirm nor deny that she was OK in the Mothman Prophecies, because doing so would open me up to a lot of mockery by friends and loved ones.? She could have played Cate Blanchett’s character in the new Indiana Jones movie, and done a fine job with it especially if she’d worn leather pants and / or high leather boots.
One more last note.? Christopher Walken is in this movie.? He’s the marshmallow creme in this peanut butter and fluff sandwich.? I would pay $6 to watch him eat lunch, all the while thinking to myself, He added pepper — his Caesar salad needs more cowbell.
- I did not pay to see this movie.? I would pay $6 to see this movie in a theater.?? $6.50, if the chairs were really comfortable.
- I would not buy this movie on DVD.? I would buy a DVD of 2 hours of Robin Williams unleashing his comedic fury on the American political process and / or the presidential elections.? If anyone knows him, tell him — he’d do it for me, right?
- When I first wrote the line above, I wrote “political furry.” Which made me chuckle.? He is a hairy guy.
- I would watch this movie again.? 8 months from now.? Probably not sooner, unless the wife asked to watch it and she made popcorn.? With butter.? And a beer.? Popcorn with butter, and a beer, not popcorn with butter and beer.
- I am telling you to go rent this movie. Get it from Netflix if you can.? This right after watching Dave, on a Saturday night.? Call it your own little Laura Linney double-feature and mockery of the elections.? And then spend dinner the next night talking about who you’d vote for — Dave, or Dobbs.
July 6th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Where does the boob job with squeek toys come in?
July 6th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
From the end of the movie. Post-presidential stuff, when they’re showing that he’s back to his old form, he makes this jokes. I thought it was priceless.