Man of the Year

Man of the Year; political satire / drama, USA, 2006; D: Barry Levinson, S: Robin Williams, Christopher Walken, Laura Linney, Lewis Black, David Alpay, Jeff Goldblum, Rick Roberts, Tina Fey

As a joke, comedian Tom Dobbs decides to run for the President of the United States. Even though he starts off giving serious speeches about social and economic problems, his staff, including Jack and Eddie, encourage him to do a comedy speech during a debate with Republican and Democratic candidates on a TV debate, and indeed, the audience loves it. Unexpectedly, Tom is elected President. However, a computer glitch from the Delacroy counting company declared Tom the winner by error, and the Delacroy employee Eleanor Green tries to contact Tom about it. Delacroy CEO tries to hush up the error by drugging Eleanor and runing her reputation. In the end, Tom goes to Saturday Night Live and declares that he was elected by an error, and thus hands over his Presidency before he was even inaugurated.

The third and final cooperation between director Barry Levinson and comedian Robin Williams, "Man of the Year" is a movie that starts off very good, but then a third into its runtime, it seems as if it becomes scared of its own story, and then abandons it without exploring all the rich potentials of it. The opening act shows a daring and unusual plot concept of a comedian, Tom Dobbs, running for the President of the United States, which would prove very similar to the later events involving Zelenskyy depicted in the comedy TV show "Servant of the People". Williams still has some great examples of one-liners and jokes in this first third, whether he is arguing with his campaign advisor ("It's like the comic who gets to play Carnegie Hall but shows up and plays the violin. It's not what they go to see." - "How many analogies do you have left?" - "How many does it take to make my point?"), through his comical rant during the TV debate ("You don't want an amendment to the Constitution on burning the flag. Make it out of asbestos!"), or when he senses that all the reporters are now looking for dirt from his past, so he goes full rampage and gives them all the details possible, open and direct ("When I was 21, I went to a prostitute and I was so bad, she had to give me a refund"). Bizarrely and perplexingly, after Tom is elected President some 40 minutes into the film, "Man of the Year" suddenly stops and wants to avoid the obvious continuation of the concept. And that is a cop-out. The rest of the movie switches to suddenly follow a crime subplot of an election employee Eleanor (Laura Linney) being a whistleblower becuase the company error in a recount made Tom appear to win the election, when that was not the case. The jokes suddenly disappear, and the movie betrays itself. Tom ultimately doesn't spend a day as a President, which is disappointing and incomplete. It is comparable to what "Mrs. Doubtfire" would have looked like if Williams' character would have disguised himself as a woman, did a test with his brother, and then decided give up on this plan and just spend the rest of the film in normal clothes as himself trying to win his kids back.

Grade:++