Man of the Year stars Robin Williams as a comedian who decides to run for president. Warning: this is a movie from 2006, so my review will contain spoilers.
Robin Williams decides to run for president and thanks to a computer glitch is elected. Eleanor, played by Laura Linney, notified her boss before the election that there was a problem, but with his millions of dollars in stock and his company's reputation on the line, he tells her to keep quiet. Then he sends a thug to fill her full of drugs. When she freaks out in the cafeteria and is admitted to the hospital, the drugs are discovered and it calls everything she says into question.
Since that closes off almost every avenue to her--the press would investigate and discredit her, law enforcement would discredit her--Eleanor decides to go right to Robin Williams and tell him herself that he really didn't win the election. She can't get the courage together at their first meeting, but she does manage to finally tell him. Tom Dobbs (Robin Williams) is ready to give a press conference to tell the world that he's not legitimately elected, but Eleanor's old boss finds out what's going on and preempts everything, announcing that Eleanor was obsessed with Tom Dobbs and has been seen with him after the election and so on.
I found the fact that Eleanor could approach Tom Dobbs with secret service protection around him to be unbelievable. And as much as I love romances, I didn't believe that Tom could fall in love with Eleanor as fast as he did. They were only together briefly before he's getting comments from his staff about being in love. I didn't buy that at all.
Overall, I was disappointed in the movie. I wanted something more like Dave starring Kevin Kline. A movie about an ordinary or unlikely guy being president and the humor arising from what he's seeing and experiencing. I guess that's more a failing of meeting my expectations rather than a failing with the movie itself, but I found the suspense weak and felt that the movie was derailed from the premise of a comedian going to Washington as the president. It was an okay film since I was willing to sit through it, but not great.
My rating (with the warning that I was expecting something completely different): 2.5 stars
