Man of the Year

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The most refreshing thing about Man of the Year is its mingling of comedy and suspense with common decency. Levinson asks his countrymen not just to know their limits, but also to reach them.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Man of the Year remains an interesting proposition throughout, and a tale well told.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Kate Taylor

As Dobbs's chain-smoking and hard-eyed enabler, a quietly spooky Christopher Walken manages to straddle the genres more effectively, gently toying with the stereotype of the rough-edged showbiz manager.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

For 60 minutes, the movie appears to have found the right tone and approach, then everything goes wrong. It's rare to see a production that starts so strongly finish so weakly.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The movie offers several moments in which Williams comes alive, but they're few and far between.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Like a politician who waters down his message to gain favor with the masses rather than truly serving his constituency, Man of the Year seems determined to play it safe on all counts.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Levinson made a great political comedy once, "Wag the Dog," but that had a script by David Mamet. Here, Levinson seems to be torn between making a political jest and a suspense thriller. Neither works.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Wobbles unsteadily between broad humor and paranoid thrills. The result is a bland muddle.

Washington Post Jennifer Frey

A movie that can be smart-funny and astutely topical. But if what you're expecting is a start-to-finish laugh fest, beware: This picture takes some detours and never really figures out what kind of movie it wants to be.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Levinson diverts his film into a political thriller with its own conspiracy theory, an improbable romance and a curious subplot that feels like an anti-smoking ad. Little wonder his bewildered star, Robin Williams, looks confused much of the time.

Variety John Anderson

A curious hybrid -- a political/action/comedy/thriller in which Robin Williams becomes president of the United States. A movie as uneven as it sounds, "Man" is less laugh-out-loud funny than topical and suspenseful.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It's the damndest thing, watching this light but genial movie self-destruct. It's as if writer-director Barry Levinson set out to sabotage his own film by gradually turning what should have been a minor subplot into the story's main subject.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

The actors, individually fine although they appear to be in different films, tread warily on each other's turf, like Martian and Venusian making adjustments for an alien gravitational field.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

You know a comedy's in trouble when the only laughter the audience can hear is coming from the speakers. There are other problems with "Man," notably its abrupt shifts from farce to romantic comedy to suspense thriller, and the near absence of a political edge.

Time Richard Schickel

A watchable film, but it -- and its star -- might have done so much more.

Boston Globe Ty Burr

One walks out of Man of the Year aching for the squandered opportunities.

Portland Oregonian M. E. Russell

The writing is lazy, the movie focuses on all the wrong things and the tone lurches unpleasantly between gum-soft comedy and lukewarm thriller.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Williams turns out to be exactly the wrong candidate for the job, a comedian singularly uninterested in letting anyone else get a word in, but with nothing to say.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

It swerves from thriller to romantic comedy to farce without much conviction, though you can occasionally salvage a glimmer of amusing possibility. Mr. Williams scores with a few throwaway jokes.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

The result is a mess -- sometimes an entertaining mess, but mostly a movie that makes a perfunctory mockery of the mockery currently passing for political discourse.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

But instead of being the hippest kid on the block, this plays like some ranty, paranoid comic thriller. It'd be more fun watching Jimmy Stewart get the beat-down from Claude Rains on the Senate floor; when Mr. Williams goes to Washington, the result is a total snooze.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Levinson has written and directed in many genres. But rarely has he made a film as indecisive and diffident as Man of the Year.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

Writer-director Barry Levinson leaned on Robin Williams the way a one-ring circus relies on its lone acrobat. So they're jointly responsible for the film's utter failure.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

If there's anything sadder than a satire without teeth, it's a thriller without thrills. Even sadder is the rare movie that fails at both genres simultaneously. That, and that alone, makes Man Of The Year exceptional.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

No doubt, Levinson thought he was making this generation's "Dr. Strangelove." What he's actually made is a desperate, ponderous sop to progressives that caters to all of the left's worst fears about voter fraud, corporate malfeasance and the impossibility of effecting real change.

Village Voice Robert Wilonsky

Levinson loses his movie, his audience, and his purpose in a tangle of conspiracy theories and crackpot notions that sink the movie just when it begins to transcend expectations. In short, it would have been great if it had stopped, oh, 12 minutes in.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Mainly it's a shambles, though for once Williams gets to do what he's best at (his stand-up shtick), and the absurd story, no matter how carelessly assembled, keeps moving.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

It's a comedy, a political thriller, a love story: Barry Levinson's Man of the Year tries to be all things to all people and fails on every count -- a little like the generic, ineffectual politicians it's pretending to excoriate.

Premiere Ethan Alter

The film is laughable when it tries to be dramatic and stone-faced when it strains to be funny. Beyond that, Man of the Year is often so wildly off the mark in its depiction of how elections are run, it's hard to believe that it was directed by the same guy who helmed "Wag the Dog," one of the savviest political films ever made.

New York Post Kyle Smith

Halfway through, the jokes stop - the laughs never began - and give way to a tiresome thriller.