Movie: Man of the Year

We’ve had this Netflix pick at the house for a while. Last night we finally put it in the DVD player and it didn’t disappoint. “Man of the Year” is a Barry Levinson film about a talk show host/comedian named Tom Dobbs (played by Robin Williams) who ends up running for President after a fan posits the idea to him during a taping of his tv show. He runs as an Independent and gains a respectable following of supporters. Come election day, the software for the new voting machines has a glitch and miscalculates the votes – with Dobbs coming out as the next President of the United States.

I honestly didn’t know what this movie was supposed to be – comedy? drama? But as soon as I saw that Barry Levinson was the director, I knew that regardless of the genre (it’s actually more like a dramedy) I’d enjoy the movie (Levinson directed one of my favorites, “Avalon,” starring a very young Elijah Wood).

The cast was great – Robin Williams, Laura Linney, Christopher Walken, Lewis Black, Jeff Goldblum. The script was well-written and evenly-paced. It never got slow for me and I really liked how the movie was filmed. It’s a pity this movie didn’t do better at the box-office – it must have come out against some heavy hitters to get overlooked the way it did.

4 paintball games out of five.