Man of the Year

On his better days, Barry Levinson has masterminded classic comedies such as Rain Man and Wag the Dog. In his lesser moments, he’s been the culprit behind such schlock as Envy and most recently RV. Man of the Year is partly a return to form for the legendary Levinson. It toys with the sort of political satire that made Wag the Dog a masterpiece and hints at some of the emotional complexity that fueled Rain Man. Unfortunately, it mixes and mashes so many of these otherwise wonderful attributes that the film turns into a jumble of ideas and genres. It also has none of the bite or grip of Levinson’s earlier material. It’s a charming, funny but ultimately sour concoction that comes off as a toothless, softy rendition of Levinson’s greatest hits.

Nonetheless, Levinson is still leagues beyond most directors making contemporary mainstream comedies and his work here catches a wonderfully free spirited exuberance for much of its sadly overlong runtime. After oversulking in weird indies and going over the top in RV, Robin Williams finds himself in his first palatable comedy vehicle in some time. He brings a great mix of intelligence and zaniness to Tom Dobbs, the Jon Stewart-esque political comedian who becomes an unlikely presidential candidate. Williams' shtick carries the first half of the film briskly by as Dobbs leads a savvy anti-establishment campaign that hysterically disrupts the repressed conventional norms of today’s politics. When this routine wears thin, the film shifts into a sometimes functional but always off key conspiracy thriller storyline involving a voting scandal. It works mostly because its primary character, Eleanor Green, is played by the always brilliant Laura Linney who is able to make even the silliest things utterly convincing. Even though both the comedy and thriller plots do work briefly, neither storyline stays compelling for more than half the film. Plus, the anticlimactic finish uses an annoyingly neat and tidy montage to describe how everything turned out just fine. It’s a shameful waste of the good material that has come before it.

This is a mildly successful film that works well in some moments, but never pulls its interesting bits together in a way that feels satisfying to the viewer. It’s still one of the funnier and wiser comedies of recent months, particularly on this scale of release. Unfortunately, its jokes are just not sharp enough and its characters are just not deep enough. It’s good, but it’s not as good as it should have been.

Grade: B-