Man of the Year (**1/4)

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? Robin Williams plays the host of a comical politically oriented comic talk show who runs a surprisingly successful populist campaign for president.

+ Laura Linney does a nice job as a computer geek who uncovers a glitch in the nation’s new electronic voting system. Christopher Walken plays the candidate’s surprisingly level-headed advisor. Some parts are funny.

- Director Barry Levinson’s already made one political satire, the somewhat overrated Wag the Dog, but this isn’t actually satirizing anything. It’s hard to fathom what he and Williams were going for. The candidate’s politics rarely go beyond decrying “special interests” and stating that too much attention is being paid to a flag-burning amendment. His jokes reference Carmen Miranda and George Hamilton. Quite cutting edge, no? Hardly the stuff that would excite the electorate, or offend anyone watching this movie. The opposition is equally fictional and nondescript. But I guess the story is really about the reluctant but plucky whistleblower. She sees the candidate on TV and knows she can trust him. He sees her twice and is willing to risk his political career on her say-so. The incipient, tepid thriller element is complemented by Jeff Goldblum, who can do little with his standard evil businessman role.

= **1/4 A step up from Toys, Levinson’s last movie with Williams, but only just. It could have been better. Elements of the movie suggests a critique of the celebrity politician phenomenon as well as the idea that a politician’s private behavior ought to be the concern of the voters. But I may be extrapolating. Probably Levinson just thought it would be funny to have a candidate who inhaled, and who joshes that he’ll appoint a lesbian cabinet because it will be “more fun to think about what they’re doing behind closed doors.” Rolling on the floor yet? Recommended mostly for fans of Williams’s stand-up material, since he is nearly playing himself.

IMDb link