Man of the Year (2006)

Genre: Comedy/Drama/Crime/Romance

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

Everyone is tired of politicians, their false promises, artificial behaviour, corruption, lack of accountability and a host of other things. TV comedian, John Dobbs (Williams) is the host of a popular comedy talk show when one of his viewers suggested that he run for president. The comment initially got passed off as a joke but with more and more fans suggesting the same idea, John Dobbs decided to run for president. He stood for everything that the other candidates did not and gave immense confidence to the public that he can change their lives for good. Eleanor Green (Linny) works for a software company called Delacroy who is currently developing a computerised system of vote counting rather than the conventional paper and ballot method. Eleanor finds a bug in the system that could potentially swing votes to another candidate because of a flawed algorithm and decides to escalate the matter to the upper management. John Dobbs ends up winning the presidential election with a landslide victory, a win that Eleanor knew was false. With Delacroy stocks shooting through the roof, the management decides to let the problem pass under the rug and ensure that Eleanor is kept silent. The movie explores a good concept of a comedian becoming the president and is actually a good watch for the first half an hour or so. It is only after this point, that the movie gets slow, the romance starts seeping in and Robin Williams is not funny anymore. The story is the kind that could've been wrapped up in no time whatsoever but was unneccessarily stretched in the interest of completing the run time. The only saving grace in the movie was Robin Williams whose humour actually does make you laugh and instills his persona of being a comedian. A good entertainer for a few laughs, but if you turn it off after the half way mark, you won't be missing anything special.

Thumbs up: Robbin Williams and his humour

Thumbs down: The second half

Rating: 6.2/10