I have been a fan of Robin Williams' work since his earliest days on the ancient show, “Mork and Mindy”, which unfortunately dates my age. He is what I consider a rare, multi-talented comedian who after all these years still makes me laugh to the point of tears. When I saw the trailer advertised for “Man of the Year”, I had made up my mind nothing was going to keep me away from the theatre on its opening weekend.
Settling down and waiting to laugh to tears, I found myself after a short period of time regretting I hadn't chosen to see “Departed” instead. I wasn't laughing like I normally do at his routines. He wasn't that funny, and I thought to myself, “they must have picked the only two or three jokes out of the movie and put them in the trailer!” Having paid the money, I settled in for a long, slow ride.
Robin Williams plays a character by the name of “Tom Dobbs”, a television personality who does comedy news in the vein of Jon Stewart. Before each taping of his show, he goes out and warms up the audience. It is during one such warm up that an audience member asks a question: “why don't YOU run for president?” So he does.
I really enjoy Christopher Walken because he always picks great characters to portray that stretch and invariably adds to his acting repertoire. In this script, he plays the manager of “Tom Dobbs” (Williams), and shifts between a manager and a presidential hopeful's coach. About halfway through the movie, his character is sent to the hospital and remains wheelchair bound for the remainder of the plot. There seemed to be no reason to write that plot line in because it added nothing to the overall script. With this strange plot line, Walken's performance sadly deteriorates from entertaining to not credible.
“Tom Dobbs” (Williams) wants desperately to be considered a viable candidate, so he holds back on his comedy routines through a good portion of the script. This strategy earns him a spot in the main televised debate with the Democratic and Republican challengers. During the debate, “Tom Dobbs” lets loose his style of humorous political commentary that got him tapped to run by a member of his television audience. It is also the funniest scene in the entire movie, which is used for the trailer.
The movie has twists and turns, and does take up an interesting issue that no one in reality wants to address: the Diebold voting machines that have been proven to be easily hacked. In the case of the movie, the company with the bad software is called “Delacroy”. The owners of Delacroy (who are making a fortune) go on the defensive when a software designer discovers a glitch in the program that makes “Tom Dobbs” the president-elect. All scandals need a fall guy, and the female programmer predictably demonized and made out to be a drug addict. This part of the plot was unfortunately done over the top and wasn't credible. If they had toned it down a little bit, then it would've played better.
In the end, the programmer tells “Tom Dobbs” he's not the president and he has to figure out inside his own soul what he should do. Even his own team members try to discredit the programmer based on the information they have been fed to him.
In the end, he comes out and tells the world the software glitch has made him president on a performance of “Saturday Night Live”. The movie closes with various magazine covers showing “Tom Dobbs” to be the “Man of the Year” for having stepped down.
My advice? Save your money and wait until this comes out on your cable channels. Other than a few passing lines here and there, it isn't worth the ticket price.
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