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I find myself bewildered by this film on all fronts.
I have a lot of love for the films of Barry Levinson. Not all of them, but enough of them. RAIN MAN. DINER. GOOD MORNING VIETNAM. THE NATURAL. YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES. TIN MEN. BUGSY.
I especially like some of his early work when he was still “just” a screenwriter. INSIDE MOVES. AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. HIGH ANXIETY. SILENT MOVIE. I think AVALON was the last film of his that he wrote that I liked. I think the last film he made that I liked at all was LIBERTY HEIGHTS in ’99. I think he’s a director who is capable of really strong and individual work, and I think he’s equally capable of turning in something that is almost unwatchably mediocre. SPHERE. JIMMY HOLLYWOOD. DISCLOSURE. SLEEPERS. BANDITS. ENVY. Lord God... ENVY.
So I’m puzzled by the Barry Levinson on display in MAN OF THE YEAR, the new Robin Williams vehicle that may well be the most embarrassing misfire of the fall season, a film that fails continuously from the moment it begins in an almost surreal accumulation of plot nonsense.
Barry Levinson could have made a really savage indictment of critics with this film. Imagine if you were to elect a political comedian to the Presidency. It’s one thing to make jokes about the government and talk about what they do wrong, and it’s something else entirely to actually lead people to do good things. Reform is not easy, and for someone who has no experience in the system, it would be impossible, no matter how good their intentions were. Robin Williams plays Tom Dobbs, a deeply-undercooked amalgam of Jon Stewart and Bill Maher and Williams himself. The character spends the first 30 minutes of the film trying desperately not to be funny so that he can be taken seriously as a candidate, and then once he turns the “funny” loose, I found it odd how the film remained just as resolutely laugh-free. Sure enough, Levinson uses the whole wind-up of the film to get Tom Dobbs into office. And then, just when he’s got him there, his film shifts gears dramatically.
And it becomes a John Grisham style thriller.
No, seriously. Stop laughing. It does.
No, I’m not making that up. The film isn’t really about Robin Williams at all, see. Instead, it’s about Eleanor Green, played by Laura Linney. She works for the company that makes the electronic voting booths used in the election. She discovers a glitch in the software just before the election, and her company hushes it up. The result is a victory for Dobbs, and Eleanor begins to wrestle with her conscience. Should she blow the whistle on her company? Should she take the Presidency away from Dobbs, especially after she starts to get to know him and realizes that he might be the right guy for the job?
Who cares?
The thriller plot is ludicrous, and it derails what starts out as a decent character piece. I don’t think Williams ever really gets a handle on who he’s playing here, though, and the script is to blame. It goes in a million different directions at once, and since Levinson’s got sole credit on the script, I have to assume this is the movie he wanted to make. It’s a mystifying decision, though, and I just don’t think Levinson’s the right guy for that kind of material, even if it was better-written. He just doesn’t have the right sensibilities for it.
There are plenty of celebrities-as-themselves cameos in the film, both from Washington and Hollywood familiar faces. James Carville, Chris Matthews, Faith Daniels. I was surprised that Tiny Fey and Amy Poehler agreed to appear in a scene where they are supposed to be speechless on the air. Hardly something you want to suggest for stars on a live show. Christopher Walken and Lewis Black are absolutely wasted, handcuffed in nothing roles, while Jeff Goldblum is wasted in a bit part as a henchman.
Overall, this isn’t really a disappointment since I can’t say I was looking forward to it in any specific way. But it’s never fun to watch someone like Levinson make such a casually awful film. He’s better than this. And here’s hoping his next film is, too.
Drew McWeeny, Los Angeles
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