|
Upcoming Release Calendar
38
12 Rounds Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
67
$9.99 Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
|
Man of the Year
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
![]() |
|
||||||||||||
MPAA RATING: PG-13 for language including some crude sexual references, drug related material, and brief violence
Starring Robin Williams, Christopher Walken, Laura Linney, Lewis Black, Jeff Goldblum, Rick Roberts, David Alpay, Karen Hines, and Linda Kash
What would happen if one of the nation's funniest men became its leading one? This film answers just that question in a comic tale of an entertainer's accidental rise to power. (Universal)
| GENRE(S): | Comedy |
| WRITTEN BY: | Barry Levinson |
| DIRECTED BY: | Barry Levinson |
| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: February 20, 2007 Theatrical: October 13, 2006 |
| RUNNING TIME: | 115 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: | USA |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
The average user rating for this movie is 4.8 (out of 10) based on 43 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Adam B. gave it a7:
"Man Of The Year" is the kind of movie that appeals to all kinds of tastes. For example, the first thirty minutes are mostly comedic(and very hilarious, I may add), and then the rest of the film takes a fairly dark and interesting tone. While I was a bit dismayed at the idea of switching a comedy into a thriller, this movie seemed to pull it off fairly well while losing some potential. Is it one of the greatest films of all time? Not at all. Is it worth a watch? You bet.
Sam gave it a7:
Not one of Williams's best pictures despite an outstanding performance, but with the help of a great supporting cast and some nice suspense sequences, this was a very satisfying movie.
Julie S. gave it an8:
Robin Williams was absolutely perfect in this role. It was refreshing to have a whiff of honesty in politics!
Majed M. gave it a10:
Excellent Movie. Hopefully this will make people realize how ignorant there government is getting. Very Funny too.
Stu Cop gave it a1:
A horrible mess...fails as a satire and fails as a thriller. You know it's bad when the script calls for the supporting cast to constantly tell eachother how funny the main character is being...seriously several times Frank Black turns to Christopher Walken during one of Williams impromptu monologues and says "Boy he's really being funny now"....though it's painfully apparent that nothing Williams says in this movie is either funny or sadly even scathing.
Brian G. gave it an8:
I really enjoyed this movie, particularly for its political humor. The storywriting was good up to a certain point, but towards the end, it slacked off. Overall a good movie, and definetly worth watching.
Mark B. gave it a3:
A late-night TV political comedian (Robin Williams) decides to actually run for the Presidency, apparently assuming that the public would find his pathetically toothless, Jay Leno-like barbs preferable to the platitudes and do-nothingism of his two major-party opponents. If that's really the case, we're all in big trouble: Barry Levinson's remarkably spineless, would-be satire (which lacks even the minimum requirements to characterize it as such) not only scrupulously avoids drawing blood, it doesn't even try to nibble on any of its apparent targets. The Republican challenger and Democratic incumbent (an old-school type who managed to gain the White House anyway, making this film a bigger fantasy than any of the Lord of the Rings series, together or seperate) aren't caricatured at all; Williams' monologues pathologically shy away from such hot-button subject matter as Iraq, abortion, the role of religion in politics or anything that really matters to either side of the spectrum. Levinson's spinelessness has been repeatedly measured in other reviews and posts against the cogency of his supremely well-observed and still relevant 1993 faux-documentary Wag the Dog; I'd prefer to recall the script he cowrote for 1979's ...And Justice For All, a two-hour primal shriek of agony and outrage against the inequities and ineptitudes of the American legal system that was too raw and passionate to care much about being tagged as heavy-handed; flaws and all, it was a work of courage that Levinson appears to have lost long ago. God bless Laura Linney, who as a suspicious pollster who discovers something ominous in the vote-counting process, seems to be under the illusion that she's acting in a real movie; whenever she's on screen, particularly in two scenes when her character is in jeopardy, she almost convinces us too. The most trenchant (if not especially original) observation that Man of the Year makes is that many potential voters get more of their news from comedians like Jon Stewart, Bill Maher and Stephen Colbert than they do from more traditional sources. Here's an idea: why not make a movie about a Colbert-type--a liberal pretending to be a conservative--conducting a psuedo-campaign who becomes forced to decide whether to continue playing his familiar role or really say what he believes when his run for high office really catches fire? That's gotta work better than almost anything in Man of the Year...provided that Levinson and Williams stay far, far away from it.

| Return to top of page |

Popular on CBS sites: iPhone 3G | Fantasy Football | Moneywatch | Antivirus Software | Recipes | E3 2009
About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise
© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use