Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/090792/09079930.000

Text File | 1993-04-08 | 5KB | 112 lines

                                                                                REVIEWS, Page 65

CINEMA

The Best Man For the '90s


By RICHARD CORLISS

    TITLE: BOB ROBERTS
    WRITER AND DIRECTOR: Tim Robbins

    THE BOTTOM LINE: A sly musical comedy about a cynical
right-wing politician is a tonic for jaded liberals.


    Saturday Night Live may as well take the rest of the year
off, because the candidates are doing their own standup comedy.
It's as if George Bush and Bill Clinton were running not for
President but for Tonight Show host. And the touchstone of their
political humor is popular culture, which they may think is the
only thing the electorate knows or cares about. So Dan Quayle
hates Murphy Brown. Bush wants families to be "more like the
Waltons and less like the Simpsons." Clinton, who does a better
impression of Bush's prissy drawl than he does of Elvis,
promotes his campaign with the unwipe-offable grin of a pitchman
on a late-night infomercial. Newt Gingrich calls the Democrats'
family-values policy the "Woody Allen plank."

    All of which leaves little room for professional
comedians, let alone filmmakers with a polemical ax to bury in
some foolish politician's scalp. How can they parody something
that is already the lowest form of public discourse?

    Tim Robbins answers that question with a song. As writer,
director and star of the hilarious mock-documentary Bob Roberts,
Robbins argues that '90s anomie is the flip side of '60s
idealism -- the perky music, so to speak, without the
hammer-of-justice lyrics. The perfect candidate for this era of
moral confusion would be a millionaire folk singer, a
charismatic opportunist who can twist Woody Guthrie into Pat
Buchanan by warbling, "This land was made for me."

    It was surely made for Bob Roberts, a right-wing minstrel
running for the Senate against a liberal incumbent named
Brickley Paiste (and played by Gore Vidal, whose 1960 drama, The
Best Man, addressed similar campaign compromises). With the help
of a Mephistophelian campaign boss (Alan Rickman) and a mostly
fawning corps of TV anchors (James Spader, Peter Gallagher,
Susan Sarandon, Pamela Reed), Bob will do anything to get
elected. Power is something a fellow could nearly die for.

    Nearly 30 years ago, Vidal argued that an American tyrant
would achieve power not by ranting his hatred a la Hitler but
by crooning a demagogic lullaby. For some, Ronald Reagan, who
could say mean things without sounding mean -- sometimes without
sounding as if he meant them or knew what they meant -- was the
proof of Vidal's theory. Bob Roberts is the next step. He sings
jolly hate songs as his parents sang Michael, Row the Boat
Ashore (a tune that Robbins' father Gil made famous as a member
of the '60s folk group the Highwaymen). Bob Roberts is an
anti-Bob Dylan; the anthem of this rebel conservative is Times
Are Changin' Back.

    But where Dylan howled and scowled, Bob smiles. In a
wonderful vignette, Bob sits at a computer, absentmindedly
singing one of his tunes, then notices that a documentary crew's
camera is on him. He pauses a second, then flashes the smile.
Like Clinton, Bob knows that no matter what the provocation,
it's best not to seem annoyed. He'll be no Nixon. To blow his
cool is to blow the campaign. Bob has perfected the notion of
the dimple as political statement. And maybe he has no anger in
him, which is to say no beliefs worth defending with impolitic
righteousness. As Paiste says of Bob, "I don't have any idea who
he is. I don't have any idea what he's like. I don't think I'm
supposed to have any idea."

    As the star of Robert Altman's The Player, Robbins learned
how to keep things smartly abustle. And in the manner of
Altman's TV series Tanner '88, he sets an easily acidulous tone;
Robbins is having fun poking fun. Ultimately, as if to prove
paranoia is not unique to right-wingers, he blames Bob and his
advisers for every political atrocity of the past decade -- and
a few new ones, including framing a rabid fringe journalist
(Giancarlo Esposito) who may have the goods on bad Bob. The
crimes are listed not so much to push a leftish agenda as to
clarify Bob's villainy for viewers who might be seduced by his
style. Robbins, eager not to be misunderstood, has insisted that
there be no sound-track album, since the satire in Bob's songs
might get lost or perverted on pop radio.

    But what happens when the butt of your satire co-opts your
plot line? The Republican Convention could have been dreamed up
by Oral Roberts -- or Bob. Folksy singers abounded in Houston,
supporting party ideology with hymns to red blood, white bread
and blue-tinted hair. There was country star Lee Greenwood, who
has been married five times, appearing as the warm-up act for
Barbara Bush on Family Values Night. If he had burst into Times
Are Changin' Back, the cognoscenti's sniggers would have been
drowned by cheers of the faithful.

    Beware, Tim Robbins. You may have created a monster. Bob
Roberts could become a media star or, in 1996, the next
President of the United States. Satire has a way of ripening
into prophecy.