Man of the Year (Stormy Pinkness)

Well, I was not expecting that. Over the past two months I have seen many previews for Robin Williams’ new movie, Man of the Year. These previews, along with the premise of the movie, led me to believe that I was going to see a good-natured comedy about the political promise. I feel like that was kinda half true. However, let’s first examine the premise of this film.
Imagine a country that is so disillusioned with its leaders that anyone who speaks up against them is instantly a better presidential candidate than the usual suspects in these elections. (I know, it’s hard.) This is what happens in Man of the Year. Robin Williams plays a very outspoken comedian who is told that he should run for president. Funnily enough, he actually decides to go for it. There is also a secondary story of a faulty new computerized ballot system. So the movie shows that there are two things that may not always be reliable in our society: Number one is politicians, and number two is technology.
As I mentioned, this movie was not what I expected it to be. I expected a comedic satire about the state of politics in our nation. While I did get that, I wasn’t expecting it to also be a sort of political thriller. With both of these put together it seemed to distract the movie. Maybe the movie has ADD, so it’s not its fault that it kept switching its attention back and forth between plots. Now, I’m not saying that this was a completely terrible thing, but I do feel like it could have been done in a more cohesive way.
Overall, the acting was alright. Robin Williams and Laura Linney both gave solid performances. The supporting cast, which included Christopher Walken, also provided a solid acting basis. However, there was nothing overly thrilling about the movie. Even Jeff Goldblum, who played a typical lawyer only out to help himself, did not really bring anything extra to the role, there was nothing that made you utterly despise him or root for him.
However, there were some outstanding scenes in the movie, where you envy characters because you wish you could just say what they are saying. But there were too few outstanding scenes to outweigh the ones that were just good. So this movie is a 6. It seemed to not choose which storyline it really wanted to follow, although it reserved both. Also the acting, while not sub-par, was not what I expected from Robin Williams and Laura Linney. I still think is the movie had a great concept, but the film is kinda a work in progress. It made me laugh, but when it comes to politics I want to laugh and think at the same time, like I do while watching Jon Stewart. But alas, my laughter was lonely without my thoughts to accompany it throughout the movie.