LYT's Weblog

But then, after Williams’ Tom Dobbs decides to run for president (and why he suddenly decides to do so is never clear), he makes a choice not to be funny on the campaign trail. Hmm, why did we come see this movie, again? Then his manager (Walken) finally persuades him to be funny again, and he goes up in the polls. He gets in the debates and ignores all the rules, a situation that in real life would have security haul his ass out.

Oh, and then he wins the election. Don’t worry, that’s not a big spoiler, because then the movie gets into its real plot, which isn’t comedic at all -- the reason Dobbs wins is because the company that owns all the voting machines didn’t fix a major error. But the only person who knows this is Laura Linney, who works for Diebold, er, I mean Delacroy. The rest of the story is kind of a half-assed ‘70s political thriller wanna be, with shadowy goons from Delacroy hunting down Linney to stop her telling the truth. But she knows if she can just get to the new president, he’ll believe her. Only she’s starting to fall for him and doesn’t want to be the one who brings him down.

No doubt someone thought the Diebold machine issue would be timely, but here’s the problem: The real-life fear about Diebold machines is they don’t leave a paper trail, and the CEO made comments about delivering Ohio to Bush. In the movie, there is no political agenda at all; the company just doesn’t want anyone to know there’s a glitch, because it might hurt their stock. So they inject Linney full of drugs, and later try to murder her over that. Nefarious means, but not in the service of an especially evil scheme.

Also the movie’s being marketed as a comedy, and it isn’t funny. But if it in fact is supposed to be a thriller, it isn’t very thrilling either. If the point of the movie were that Dobbs is perceived as funny despite his hoary material and crappy delivery, and no corporate interests care that an anti-corporate candidate wins but they do worry that a computer error will come to light, even though it’s an error that can be fixed...Do you care?

Oh, and there’s a subplot about Walken’s character being a smoker, which means that he ends up in the hospital at a certain point, and eventually is in a wheelchair. This has no effect on the plot whatsoever; it’s just there. Walken narrates the film, in an awkward post-production style that makes it clear the beginning of the film wasn’t playing well to test audiences, but he’s narrating to a shadowy figure in an opposite chair whose face you never see. I was thinking the final gag would be the reveal of whom that person is -- maybe Jon Stewart or Bill Maher, saying, “I can do better!”

But no - it’s never revealed who the person is. So why even stage those scenes? Why not just have Walken narrate the existing scenes?

The real ultimate joke of the movie, one that’s at the audience’s expense, is that it actually ends up endorsing the two-party system and condemning its own premise. So the one interesting idea in the whole thing is finally shot down.

So to recap: Not funny, not timely, not thrilling, and no courage of its own convictions. An embarrassment for all concerned.

It’s still not the worst movie of the year, though -- BATTLE IN HEAVEN has that award sewn up as far as I’m concerned.