MAN OF THE YEAR: Blu-ray (Universal/Morgan Creek, 2006) Sony Home Entertainment

 When Barry Levinson's Man of the Year arrived on DVD in 2010, I made the comment that there needed to be a ‘special place in heaven’ for the utterly gifted Robin Williams, an artist so generous with his craft and capability to make us laugh at the absurdities of being human, that to simply classify him as a comedian was to distill those formidable talents into crass pop-u-tainment. I could not have foreseen the conspiring forces soon thereafter to deprive us all of William’s inimitable comedic style forever.  Aside: I sincerely miss Robin Williams. His death still breaks my heart. Like Chaplin before him, Williams was a consummate raconteur, deceptively weighty in the tiny nuggets of wisdom he peppers throughout his stand-up routines. His genius lay not in the myriad of rapid-fire laughs, farcically - if generously - ladled, one upon the next, nor in his unrelenting sugar-spun delivery - so full of wisp and polish it confounds our senses ever more now as it tickles our funny bones. No, Robin Williams' great gift to the world is his genuine affection for the audience. He so obviously and deliciously enjoys us as much as we have enjoyed his infectious spirit, discovering himself as one of the people is a journey, he willingly takes the rest of us along – just for kicks. Williams’ movie career constantly strove toward more lofty platitudes, even when the movies were less amply endowed to sustain his grandly chaotic insanity. So, perhaps it hardly surprises us to find Williams finally taking his stab at the political farce with all of his creative juices pumping at full piston. Man of the Year (2006) is a shockingly original poke at politics, the self-aggrandizing media sideshow that still thinks it is the whole circus. And, in a year where political muck-raking has all but overwhelmed the good sense God gave a lemon, and, continues to ferment and corrode our respect for the presidency of the United States, the reissue of Williams and Levinson’s absurd and joyful bastardization of ‘the process’ by which officials get elected into office, unequivocally demonstrates whatever smoke screen gets put on for our benefit, it’s still the same old ‘shit show’, just with a different clown at the helm. All hail this clown!

Williams plays Tom Dobbs - a political talk show host, whose genuine concern for the future of the United States inadvertently thrusts him into the arena as a viable Presidential candidate. After declaring his candidacy, Dobbs learns he has been taken seriously enough by both the Republican and Democratic parties to partake in the Presidential debate as an Independent. With his former producer, Jack Menken (Christopher Walken) at his side, Dobbs departs from the scripted debate to accost incumbent, Sen. Mills (David Ferry) while moderator, Faith Daniels helplessly looks on. The sheer firestorm derived from Dobbs incendiary remarks nets him primetime space on all the networks even though he never takes out personal air-time to campaign for himself. Meanwhile, in an arena of a different sort, computer programmer, Eleanor Green (Laura Linney) is fast learning truth serves no purpose in a world unrepentant to accept it. Working at Delecroy, a company whose new software is poised to revolutionize the way the American public casts their ballots, Green discovers a glitch in the system too late. Warning her boss, Hemmings (Rick Roberts) of the possibility the voting system could elect the wrong man to the Oval Office, Eleanor is told to forget about that margin for error, then, is threatened by Hemmings legal mouthpiece, Stewart (Jeff Goldblum) and later, drugged in her apartment with a near lethal cocktail of barbiturates and other illegal narcotics.

After flipping out in the middle of Delecroy's cafeteria to a packed audience, the company quietly fires Eleanor in an attempt to put the matter of her exposing their ineptitude to rest. Unfortunately, for the executives, Eleanor's next line of defense is to contact Dobbs directly and reveal to him a malfunction is responsible for electing him the President of the United States. The screenplay by Levinson continues on this dual trajectory - inserting touches of Williams' comedic genius whenever this rather heavy 'conspiracy' narrative threatens to submarine the otherwise high-octane entertainment value. Gradually, however, the X-Files-styled rogue elements win out and dominate the narrative, culminating with a failed rendezvous between Dobbs and Eleanor. After Eleanor is nearly killed in a hit and run, Dobbs realizes he is, in fact, not 'the man of the people', though ironically - in confessing this to a packed audience during a live broadcast, he suddenly becomes their 'man of the year.'

Man of the Year is aimed to be a delicious farce. It is difficult not to appreciate it simply for its highlights – and, there are many, most deriving from Williams' wickedly satirical hatchet job on the status quo in American politics then, that – no kidding – is even more apropos today. However, like many of the movies in which Williams has appeared, the material here falls otherwise short of his comedic zeitgeist to sustain it. Linney and Walken are superb - each offering bold, broad strokes of gifted performance to augment Williams’ lead. But Jeff Goldblum is utterly wasted in this screenplay, his character inexplicably the heavy, jettisoned shortly thereafter, except in flashback. What was the point?!? Levinson might have had greater leverage had he decided, either to concentrate on the farcical aspects of the political arena, or focused on a more straight-forward cloak and dagger political thriller. Man of the Year is actually trying to do too much; to be all things to all people – not an altogether uncommon pursuit of any political candidate in their pitch to the American people – but, and rather predictably, winds up being much ado about nothing instead. The picture’s tent pole is undeniably, Robin Williams. And it is saying much of Williams, that he manages to keep more than his end up for the bulk of our story. He remains a sheer joy to watch. So, in the final analysis, Man of the Year is a worthwhile entertainment because of Robin Williams. Even as the picture, as a whole, lacks staying power, and loses a lot of steam before it fades to black, the memory of Williams’ in his prime is a perennial, well worth your coin.

Sony Home Entertainment has since inherited this back-catalog title and finally elected to release Man of the Year to Blu-ray. Universal Home Video's DVD presentation was unremarkable. But Sony’s continued due diligence in hi-def has resurrected a very fine-looking 1080p image harvest, sure to please fans of this movie.  The image is sharp with boldly saturated colors. Fine details pop as they should and a light smattering of film grain looks very indigenous to its source. Flesh tones continue to lean slightly to the piggy pink spectrum. But perhaps this was always the case – even theatrically. The 5.1 DTS audio is wonderfully engaging. Once again, nothing in the way of extras but a pair of superfluous featurettes. Bottom line: Man of the Year is primarily driven by the zany antics of Robin Williams.  His brilliant comedy makes it a movie worth seeing again – if not again and again.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

3

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

1