Movie Review Man of the Year

Man of the Year (2006) 

Directed by Barry Levinson

Written by Barry Levinson

Starring Robin Williams, Christopher Walken, Laura Linney, Lewis Black, Jeff Goldblum, Amy Poehler

Release Date October 13th, 2006

Published October 20th, 2006

Robin Williams is not hip. He's funny, energetic and a legit star but he is not hip. That makes his role as a star political comic, ala the undeniably hip Jon Stewart, in the new movie Man of the Year more than a little ill fitting. Williams is quite funny in notching a number of smart and quite pointed political barbs but also a number of jokes that are a little past their sell by date.

Of course, if Williams' hit and miss jokes were the film's only problem with Man of the Year it would not be so bad. Unfortunately, director Barry Levinson throws in one terribly awkward subplot that takes Man of the Year from merely flawed to flailing.

Tom Dobbs (Williams) has a top rated cable show on which he talks about the issues of the day with edgy, politically incorrect humor. One night before the show an audience member gives Tom a crazy idea, why doesn't he run for president. Floating the idea on the show, Tom gets a huge response on the internet that leads to him declaring his candidacy and getting on the ballot in 13 states.

On the campaign trail with his showbiz manager Jack (Christopher Walken), and his head writer Eddie (Lewis Black), Tom's approach to the campaign is serious and joke-free. Tom desperately wants to be taken seriously as a candidate. That plan goes out the window when Tom gets into the presidential debate and begins riffing on the hot button issues of the day as acerbically as he might on his show.

His debate performance garnered a lot of attention but there is no way he could possibly win. Or is there? Somewhere out in the San Fernando Valley a computer company has earned the contract nationwide to provide electronic voting systems. The system has a serious bug in it that is discovered by Eleanor (Laura Linney), the company's lead programmer. On election night when Eleanor realizes the bug she found was not fixed; she decides she must blow the whistle, something the company will not allow to happen (cue ominous music).

The computer company subplot is a thriller element that this film absolutely botches. After launching an interesting concept, a comedian elected president, director Barry Levinson gets distracted by the details of how such a thing could happen. Tossing together this computer voting/thriller plot, Levinson gives us a plausible reason as to how a comedian could get elected president but misses the more interesting plot, how would a comedian run the country.

Watching Man of the Year I kept hoping that Levinson would cut through the thriller plot and show more of Tom Dobbs comedian figuring out how to be the most powerful man in the world. His thoughts on this rather momentous occasion beyond the jokes might be some place to start. But Levinson, I gather, just didn't believe audiences would buy Tom getting elected without some chicanery.

It's a fair bet that many people might not buy the premise without the computers, but that really isn't the point. We are at a place right now where most of the country is in the center and the rest are divided to extremes and make most of the noise. The idea that the center might rally to a centrist candidate, say a charismatic comedian, is an interesting and timely idea. Man of the Year has that idea but tosses it in favor of a dull thriller plot.

In early 2002 Robin Williams did a standup special on HBO that absolutely killed. His comedic skills having been tarnished by a few years worth of really bad movies, Patch Adams-Jack-Bicentennial Man, he bounced back with a tremendously funny concert set. That concert, in which Williams mixed his wildman schtick with some very smart and pointed humor, is the template for the character of Tom Dobbs, wildly energetic and very smart.

Part of the genius of Robin Williams in that HBO special and here in Man of the Year is the risks he takes with his humor. Always on the edge between funny and cringe inducing, Williams rides that razors edge in Man of the Year by recycling Clinton era humor that makes you snore while making timely references to the middle east quagmire, gay marriage and racism. When he's on, Williams rivals Jon Stewart and Bill Maher in irreverence and smarts, when he's off however he's Carrot Top crossed with Richard Jeni.

Thankfully, Williams is on far more than he's off in Man of the Year. It's just a shame he doesn't get more time to be on or off. Williams is forced off screen far too often in Man of the Year to make room for the thriller plot. I love Laura Linney but there is nothing that even someone of her tremendous talent can do with this ill-fated material. The way that Barry Levinson brings her and Williams together in the film, marrying the thriller and comedy plot in a romantic subplot, is almost less believable than the crappy thriller plot.

Robin Williams hasn't been this good in awhile. It's a shame that his efforts are often squandered in a film that just can't commit to a good premise. Politicians need courage of convictions, at least the few good ones do, and the Man of the Year too needed a little courage. The courage to craft a comic idea that is timely and relevant. Unfortunately, Barry Levinson lacks that courage and instead falls back on plot mechanics and thriller beats that interrupt what might otherwise be a pretty good political farce.

What a shame.

Movie Review: Envy

Envy (2004) 

Directed by Barry Levinson

Written by Steve Adams 

Starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Rachel Weisz, Amy Poehler, Christopher Walken

Release Date April 30th, 2004

Published April 30th, 2004 

Imagine a Hollywood pitch meeting where a producer first tells you that he has Barry Levinson attached to direct the film being pitched. Then the producer tells you that Mr. Levinson has drawn the interest of both Jack Black and Ben Stiller. This is a can't-lose pitch and you don't even know what the movie is about. The result of this can't-miss pitch is Envy, a comedy about best friends, one of whom becomes a millionaire while the other remains an everyman schlub. Somehow, despite its can't-miss pitch, it misses badly.

Ben Stiller is Tim Dingman and Jack Black is Nick Vanderpark. Tim and Nick have been best friends and neighbors for years. Their wives are friends, their kids are friends and the guys even work together at a sandpaper factory. Tim is a dedicated worker but Nick is more of a dreamer with a tendency to nod off at times. Nick spends most of his time dreaming up wacky get rich quick schemes and his latest is a doozy.

After seeing some guy on the street cleaning up dog-doo with a rubber glove and a baggy, Nick is struck with an idea. It's a spray that would make dog-doo disappear. Well it's not an invention yet, as Tim is quick to point out, all Nick has is an idea with a name, Va-Poo-Rize. Regardless of Tim's discouragement, Nick offers Tim the chance to be his fifty-fifty partner for a minimal investment. Tim, not surprisingly turns him down but ends up kicking himself when Nick's idea becomes a reality and he becomes filthy rich.

Despite his riches, Nick remains in the neighborhood. He buys out most of the neighbors surrounding his and Tim's homes and builds a mansion that fills an entire city block directly in front of Tim's house. While Tim has to get up every morning and trudge to the sandpaper factory, Nick is riding his great white horse everywhere, making sure to wave to Tim every morning as he leaves.

Tim has trouble at home, where his wife Debbie (Rachel Weisz) has left him, she can't forget how Tim turned down Nick's partnership idea. Tim is fired from the sandpaper factory after blowing up at his boss and soon he is hanging out with a bum called the J Man (Christopher Walken) at a dive bar. As the bum buys him drinks, Tim becomes increasingly angry at Nick and when he gets home, he intends on letting Nick know it. Instead, he accidentally kills Nick's horse, which kicks the plot into an entirely different and strange direction.

This is a typical Ben Stiller character prone to humiliation, fits of uncontrollable rage and self-deprecating physical comedy. Stiller is funny in this familiar comic persona though it would be nice to see him try something different.

This however, is not a typical Jack Black character and that is where the film goes wrong. In Envy, the comic whirling dervish that is Jack Black is slowed to the point of normalcy. Black's character has all sorts of wacky outfits and a Jim Carrey circa Ace Ventura haircut but his character is a neutered version of the manic over the top comic we have enjoyed in School Of Rock and High Fidelity. It doesn't help that Black's character is often shoved well into the background as the plot spins out of control around the horse and the bum.

Christopher Walken is a welcome presence playing yet another classic Walken character with one or two of those way out there monologues that only he could deliver. However, his character is a distraction from the center of the film, which should be Stiller and Black.

Subplots are added and discarded as director Barry Levinson spins wildly from one comic idea to the next, looking for a purpose. The horse thing takes up too much of the film, while a more intriguing idea hangs just off screen as a controversy erupts over where the dog-doo goes when the spray makes it disappear. It's gross but it's a funnier idea than anything that happens with the horse. The dog-doo idea is introduced and discarded and then brought back without explanation and then left unresolved as if it were a comic idea that they thought worked but did not and the filmmakers were forced to edit around it.

The whole film feels like it was assembled in the editing room without a clear purpose of what the filmmakers had filmed. Thus, there are some funny moments in the film but no cohesiveness to the plot. It's a series of ideas with no central purpose. The ending is especially slapdash and unsatisfying. There may have been a good film in there somewhere but what ended up in the final cut is basically all potential and no payoff.

Movie Review The Humbling

The Humbling (2015) 

Directed by Barry Levinson 

Written by Buck Henry 

Starring Al Pacino, Greta Gerwig, Dianne Wiest, Nina Arianda, Charles Grodin, Kyra Sedgwick 

Release Date January 23rd, 2015 

Published January 17th, 2015 

The crazed, narcissistic, sexist, ludicrousness of "The Humbling" almost needs to be seen to be believed. I say “almost” because I really don't want you to waste your precious time watching this dreadful movie. Al Pacino has been wandering in the cinematic woods for years now. While he surrounds himself with talented people in "The Humbling," each is defeated equally by the film. Based on the novel by Phillip Roth, "The Humbling" stars Al Pacino as washed-up actor Simon Axler. Simon is beginning to lose his mind. On stage one night, in front of a disinterested crowd, Simon takes a header into the orchestra pit and winds up in a mental institution. 

Despite his tendency to share his narcissistic rambling with anyone, the talking cure doesn't seem to be working. Nevertheless, after 30 days Simon heads back to his empty mansion in Connecticut to recuperate. There, Simon is joined inexplicably by Pegeen (Greta Gerwig). Pegeen explains that she is the daughter of Simon’s old acting friends. Because she had a crush on him when she was 11, she says, she'd like to give up being a lesbian and be with him. This is, despite his impoverished living situation, his inability to work, and the fact that he is 66 years old and slowly losing his mind.

Here, director Barry Levinson and Pacino might have found a believable direction for "The Humbling" if they they followed through on Pegeen being a figment of Simon's imagination. There is briefly a hint that she's not real and if that had been the direction of the story, maybe the film would not be completely horrible. Instead, the film doubles down on the Pegeen character, rendering her the picture of a sexist fantasy and feminist nightmares. With Pegeen comes a series of reductive caricatures of women including not one, but two, stalker ex-girlfriends. One of them (Billy Porter) is now a man. The other one  is Louise (Kyra Sedgwick), whom Pegeen claims to have slept with in order to get her job as a university professor. I really wish I was making all of this up, but I am not.

Pegeen's arrival at Simon's home is among the more bizarre series of scenes in any movie in 2014. Pegeen arrives, introduces herself and then angrily begins to explain who she is. Why is she angry? Apparently it’s because Simon gave her a ring when she was 11 years old and she thought it meant they were married. It's impossible to tell if this dialogue is meant as a joke, because Greta Gerwig plays the scene with a bizarre, haughty intensity that doesn't fit the scene if it is indeed intended as a joke. It probably should be funny but it is most certainly not. 

That scene somehow ends in a kiss between Pegeen and Simon which is as creepy and awkward as you would imagine between 66 year old Al Pacino and a much, much, much younger woman. Then Simon and Pegeen begin playing with a toy train. Again, all of this is played straight, as if nothing remarkable or unusual has happened. A lesbian has just switched gender preference to be with a man old enough to be her grandfather and now they are playing with toy trains. That sounds like someone describing a fever dream.

The Humbling somehow manages to get weirder and more repellent. "The Humbling" contains a subplot in which a woman named Sybil (Nina Arianda), whom Simon met while he was committed to the asylum, (funny joke, right? Sybil in a mental hospital), Sybil wants Simon to kill her husband. After Simon is released from the hospital, Sybil stalks him and continues to try to hire him to kill her husband. Why? Because in "The Humbling" all women are completely insane.

Oh, but wait dear reader, director Barry Levinson and writer Buck Henry  he film have a cop-out for all of this sexist bullshit on display: Simon is an unreliable narrator. Simon may be suffering from Alzheimer’s or a more simple form of age-related memory loss. As he narrates the story, he can't remember it well. He talks to Pegeen when she's not there. He may be inventing all of this story or none of it. "The Humbling" is a grand, disturbed, mess of a movie that inspires bafflement over those involved in its creation. The once great Levinson continues his 17-year run of terrible films and takes the once-great screenwriter Buck Henry down with him. Henry hadn't had a screenplay credit in 19 years (his sharp wit last crafted the Nicole Kidman movie "To Die For"). He should have remained retired.

Greta Gerwig, Kyra Sedgwick, Dianne Wiest, who plays Gerwig's mother in the film, and the wonderful Charles Grodin also get dragged down into the muck of Pacino's continuing decline. I can't imagine what each of these fine performers thought that they were getting into in "The Humbling," but I am sure they cannot be happy with the outcome. Repeatedly throughout the film, Simon goes meta and muses about how people only want to see him return to the stage to watch the freak, the car wreck in progress. I doubt Pacino recognizes this musing as a commentary on his own career. But indeed there is only that reason to watch a Pacino movie these days. I keep watching Pacino in part because it is my job and in part because I just don't think it can get any worse, and then it does.

"The Humbling" is the latest rock bottom for the once-great Pacino.