I Cannot Tell a Lie

I usually don't turn down free tickets, like advance screenings of movies like Man of the Year. In the film, Robin Williams plays a late-night talk show host who decides to run for Prez as an Independent because he and his young, hip viewers are disenchanted with party politics. Meanwhile, Laura Linney works for a voting systems company (Diebold in bad disguise) and discovers a glitch in their system that makes the wrong candidate win. Jon Stewart in 2008? How many votes were cast in Ohio, again? What's a paper trail? Practically ripped from the headlines.

It tried, it really did. But Man of the Year fell flat on its face. It tried to be a social commentary on politics and democracy and the media, and it really needed to take Sociology 101 first. Scattered character rants about democracy and illusion and TV and public opinion that are supposed to be oh-so-deep ended up sounded amateur and uninformed. (It was like Chuck Klosterman, trying to wax political.)

Other classes or professional-development workshops the scriptwriters needed to take before writing the screenplay:

• Campaigning 101. You don't switch from talk show host to presidential candidate and have your network team be your campaign team. Um no, despite what the movie was attempting to say rather badly, running a TV show (even a political one) and running a camapaign are nowhere near the same thing.
• Computer science 101. I don't know nothin' about creating software, but I do know that the supposed "computer glitch" in the movie's plot is a basic function that has to be specifically programmed in. It's a simple sorting rule, and it can't be an accident. (It would have made for a better movie if there had been a conspiracy, though....) Mica and I laughed hysterically (in an otherwise silent theatre) whenever the "glitch" confused the characters onscreen. Then again, we were also probably the youngest viewers there.
  
• Pre-law and/or Marketing 101. There's a scene where the voting-systems corporation throws a press conference to pre-empt the Robin Williams character. Seriously, the "press conference" was nothing but slander, and if they were really all that big and powerful, their lawyers wouldn't have allowed them to say any of it in front of cameras. Not only was it defamation, it was basic bad PR.
• Politics 101. Congress is on recess during most of the time period this movie is supposed to take place.
• Media 101. Who calls a press conference the day after Thanksgiving, the biggest shopping day of the year?

In addition to all that, the dialogue was bad, there was a cheap scare (I yelped rather loudly), and the romance was horribly awkward (Linney's character was just spineless and annoying). There were a ton of cameos by media celebs -- SNL cast, Chris Matthews. Jeff Goldblum was pretty cool, but then I've had a slight crush on him since Independence Day.

It could have been an okay movie, instead of just a crappy one. The premise is good. But none of the jokes are funny (it's Robin Williams, he's done most of it before), despite the fact that the advance-screening audience (all at least 20 years older than us) roared with laughter and guffawed when they were meant to chuckle. His schtick is accents and voices. We get it. I couldn't will them to stop laughing when they were not-so-subtly told to. It was awful.

Man of the Year was most of all a "Me too! Me too!" Baby Boomer reaction to Gen X/Y cynicism. But this imitation jadedness fails to be intelligent. It can only steal clever quotes from Mark Twain and soundbites from CNN Headlines (one of the speeches rips off Barack Obama at the '04 DNC, and I recognized a few other phrases that sounded familiar). The end of the movie chastises non-party voters for "voting for change for the sake of voting for change." And that's just simply not true.

Clearly, this movie was written by people who don't vote and don't care about democracy. And not because they're disenchanted with the political system -- but because they're lazy.