Man of the Year (2006)

Universal Pictures presents a Barry Levinson film, starring Robin Williams and Christopher Walken. Written by Levinson. 115m. PG-13 for language including some crude sexual references.

2 stars

Barry Levinson delivered a powerful satire of political chicanery with “Wag the Dog.” But there’s no punch to his newest send-up, “Man of the Year,” in which a comedian is elected president after a voting machine glitch.

Ostensibly billed as a platform for Robin Williams’ politically-orientated shtick, Levinson’s film is instead a scattershot of tangential subplots that cribs from many genres. If you’ve come to see Williams perform for two hours, I can assure you now that you’ve been duped by a deviously cut trailer.

Or, you can just stay for the first 20 minutes. That’s about the time it takes Tom Dobbs (Williams), the host of a politically-themed late-night talk show, to initiate his humorous run at the presidency.

Unfortunately, the challenge is without substance. In Levinson’s apparent attempt to deflect suggestion of any specific political agenda, Dobbs is equipped with a namby-pamby platform.

In reality, Bill Maher, the former host of “Politically Incorrect,” was probably considered unelectable for any office after comparing retarded children to dogs or saying American soldiers were “cowardly” in comparison to al-Qaeda terrorists. But Maher also routinely espouses a libertarian viewpoint, which he defends regularly from critics on both the right and left with well-reasoned arguments.

Dobbs derides a weakening education system and the corrupting influence of lobbyists, two issues that are hardly fractionalizing Congress these days. And the comedian suggests that Republicans and Democrats are essentially interchangeable, meaning either he doesn’t live in this world or his show is not as politically savvy as it’s made out to be.

Levinson’s cowardice in providing Dobbs with a generic platform does strengthen the subplot about voting machine irregularities, however. How else could we believe this candidate would carry both a historically red state like Texas and a blue state like New York?

Again, in reality, this improbable win would have been placed under a microscope by the mainstream media. But Levinson, who skewered the press for its lemming-like approach to news in “Wag the Dog,” essentially neuters them in “Man of the Year.”

The press corps celebrates, not marginalizes, Dobbs on the campaign trail. They applaud him when he violates debate decorum and runs roughshod over the other candidates, instead of paring down his tirade into its most unflattering 30 seconds and looping it endlessly on their 24 hour networks.

Dobbs, third on all major pre-election polls and only on 13 state ballots, should have been considered as politically relevant as Dennis Kucinich. But instead he’s given wall-to-wall coverage, as if he actually is an impetus to significant reforms.

Levinson also preys on our collective insecurity about the unreliability of electronic voting machines to fuel his second plot, in which the obsessive Eleanor Green (Laura Linney) discovers that her company’s system can’t correctly tabulate the millions of votes cast.

Eleanor becomes the prime component in a suspense film that surprisingly germinates in the downtime between Williams’ ad-libs. While Linney does an admirable job with the character, we’re quickly frustrated by Eleanor’s mounting paranoia and inability to relay her concerns to Dobbs. Her subplot also slows a budding momentum created through several delightful rapid-fire exchanges between Dobbs, his manager (Christopher Walken) and his head writer (the always enjoyable, but angry Lewis Black).

With three weeks left before mid-term elections, Levinson had the perfect opportunity to make a satire which really made a statement. Instead, “Man of the Year” feels easily distracted and acts completely disinterested in addressing any real problems facing voters. Suffice to say, this wasn’t the weekend substitution for “The Daily Show” that we were hoping for.