Man of the Year
The article chosen here is written by Ty Burr. It was published on October 13th, 2006. Just by looking at the story, the writer believes that movie promised to be a great comedy, but did not meet such expectations. A late-night political comedy show host (Robin William) runs for presidency based on a suggestion of one of his audience and support of his fans. He wins because of a glitch in the new election system. The Employee who discovers the glitch (Laura Linney) is drugged by the employer to look as an addict, be vulnerable, and get fired. She goes to Rubin Williams and tells him. He goes public with such news, and refuses to rerun for a new election race.
The writer believes that as the movie develops, it loses its essence, which is political comedy. He relies on the fact that the movie turns to be more romantic rather than a comedy. As for acting, the writer is not satisfied by Christopher Walken (Jack Menken), calling him “loopy.” Nor he is happy by Laura Linney (Eleanor Green), describing her acting as if she was, “stammering like a Trekkie at her first convention.” However, he does not say much on Robin Williams’ performance. Finally, the author believes that the movie did not quite enough discuss the question that politician only do what we want them to, so we should blame ourselves, not them.
I agree with the writer’s opinion that the movie ended different than what it promised to be, but I think it ended up being much better than what I expected. The movie starts as a regular comedy, but it ends with a reasonably deep and funny discussion of pure politics, which is a plus. In the beginning, the movie is very comic with Robin Williams’s spontaneous comments, but it is still funny at the end too. The Comedy here is only to serve the script and the development of events, not the other way around. For example, at the end of the movie, when asked about the relationship between him and the whistle- blower lady, William answered imitating President Clinton referring to the Monica Lewinsky affair, “I did not sleep with this woman. I wanted to, but I could not.” The movie also discusses many political questions, like what if it was for America’s best interest for William to be the president, although he was not chosen by the people? The movie answers by Robin telling the American people about the glitch, because democracy is not about doing the right thing, but rather doing the well of the people, and thus we should not be mad at politicians when they change their morals or principles. Their only principle should be to execute the desire of the public no matter how frequent it changes.
As for the acting, I think Laura Linney was brilliant, especially in the scene where she was at the coffee shop under the drug influence. Also, Christopher Walken was great as usual, although the script did not give him enough space to show his enormous talent. As for Robin Williams, he enjoyed me-as always- with the deep dramatically funny