Bob Roberts (1992)

If Bob Roberts were a real person I would be very scared for America, check that, one of the scariest things is that there are many people like Bob Roberts in politics in real life. This excellent mockumentary passed me by when it came out, so I was glad to discover it now.

Strong performances by the whole cast really make this movie shine, Gore Vidal is especially convincing as the incumbent senator, as is Robbins himself and the eerie puppet master Alan Rickman. The message of style over substance in politics making the news in America holds even more true today.

It's really too bad that this movie was mismarketed and essentially buried, it seems that even now it hasn't gotten the audience it deserved. The politicized nature of the content is most certainly the cause of that you can be sure.

The songs are frighteningly well put together and convicing, apparantly Robbins never released a soundtrack for fear of having them taken out of context. Anybody even remotely interested in the Mockumentary genre, or in politics should definitely check this gem out. A brilliant piece of black comedy.

Fmovies: This movie is a harrowing look at the reality of politics in the United States. The story shows how an evil man can utilize right wing themes and hot button issues to gain real power and influence the direction of this country. Robbins is great as the right wing, folk singer, businessman, racist, Senatorial candidate that is hoping to be Pennsylvania's voice in Washington. The sad thing is, as you watch the film, you see how easy it is for this horrible man to manipulate the media into getting him elected. By using good looks and off hand remarks candidates are able to steer elections in the direction they want them to go. Meanwhile, honesty takes a back seat to how well a candidate can croon a song. Truth trails behind what the media might be able to use as entertainment. The media is dazzled by fluff and sound bites, they turn a deaf ear to real issues. When I saw this film the first time, I was very uncomfortable. The film was too close to reality. Bob Roberts is a Joe McCarthy/Rush Limbaugh for the 1990's. Although they might seem harmless on the surface, they do pose real danger. This movie is important and should be seen by all voters. It tries to teach people to look at the facts and the real issues and put the fluff aside. Ahh, if only that could be done.

A guitar-twanging conservative with youthful looks and dark charisma launches a disturbing drive for political power in this perceptive and disturbing black comedy, written and directed by Tim Robbins.

There are lots of reasons to dislike Tim Robbins. He's a movie star. He's smug, self-righteous, arrogant, self-pitying, and rich. He's married to Susan Sarandon, the most gorgeous and vibrant mature woman imaginable. He has so much, yet consistently strikes the pose of a martyr. I tuned into this movie prepared to hate it, but came away very impressed. Whatever his flaws as a citizen or a political thinker, Tim Robbins is a gifted film maker. The musical numbers are hysterical, and the documentary style comedy is the best since SPINAL TAP. The movie keeps moving at a suspenseful pace, and the chilling ending is surprisingly convincing, understated rather than too melodramatic.

Now there are some flaws to this movie that I think merit discussion. Tim Robbins hates the Bob Roberts character he plays, hates him with a passion. Yet he strikes several false notes. Some reviewers would deny this, but Bob Roberts is clearly supposed to be an "evil" Republican populist like Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. And that's fine. But Robbins gets into trouble by making Roberts too much like . . . well, like Tim Robbins.

Bob Roberts is a too hip. He's a Hollywood hipster. He digs folk music, adores Bob Dylan, and is entirely too cerebral and too in love with the flash and glamor of MTV type videos. Tim Robbins misses the essence of how conservatives market themselves, how they tap into (and genuinely share) the loathing the white working class feels for intellectuals and artists. Bob Roberts minces around in a white fencing suit, fencing with his campaign manager, like a proud Prussian prince. Fencing! When George W. Bush was at Andover, he named himself "high commissioner of stickball." He knew even then that fencing was worse than polo. Tim Robbins misses the point about what cultural populism really means.

On a deeper level, this movie wants to leave you in a cold sweat, like Frankenheimer's 1962 version of THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. And it succeeds, to a degree. But these characters are all surface, with no depth. Bob Roberts is as cold and reptilian as Raymond Shaw, but the problem is that his evils are all political, not personal. You don't see more than a second or two of Roberts' parents and early life. You certainly don't see a maniacal mother figure like Angela Lansbury in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. There's not a hint of connection between the inner, emotional, or sexual lives of these characters and their extreme political convictions. Bob Roberts has a wife, a blonde who hangs on his arm and smiles adoringly, but we see nothing else. Married to a woman as formidable as Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins must know much more than this about marriage. But he doesn't accept the challenge. As a result Bob Roberts is a political cartoon rather than a person. And therefore the movie is chilling, but ultimately not as profound or tragic as older political films like THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE.

Bob Roberts fmovies. An amazing work!

Twice I had to confirm the release date of 1992 since this film's precise and uncanny applicability to the events of this last year were amazing. The political dynamic under which this country suffers today - along with the cabal currently installed in the White House that employed precisely the same tactics as defined in this film - were recreated, or more accurately foretold, with an uncanny truthfulness, precise focus, and vivid clarity.

Tim Robbins' direction, writing, and acting were all phenomenal; I never really fully appreciated his talent and brilliance until this film; Gore Vidal's contribution was a special treat from both a fine actor and a remarkable intellect.

Well worth the time - and a replay or two to capture, fully, all of the nuance and insight of this fine work.

I am surprised that no one in this comments index noticed how true-to-life this film turned out to be.

"Bob Roberts" was a 1992 'mock-umentry' about the election of a Republican know-nothing (the title character) to a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania; in the movie Roberts wins against a too-brainy-to win Democrat played by Gore Vidal. The real 1994 U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania featured Rick Santorum as the Republican candidate. Santorum not only had the same aggressively anti-intellectual outlook as Roberts (I understand his staff is afraid to leave him alone with the press lest he 'throw a brick'), he even used generous helpings of Roberts' faux-revolutionary rhetoric to claim that his election would be an empowerment of the common people of Pennsylvania against a murkily-described 'elite'. In fact, Santorum, like Roberts, was a front man for an economic interest - to wit, the health insurance industry - who bankrolled 95% of his lavish campaign and which was eager to replace his rival, Harris Wolford, who was an advocate for universal health coverage. Like the Vidal character, Wolford was disadvantaged by being a genuinely concerned person whose detailed worldview found it hard to stand effectively against the style of Santorum/Roberts.

Guess who represents our state today.

Tim Robbins has made one heck of a statement with this film presenting politics as it really is, crooked and disturbing. The screenplay is brilliantly clever brimming with brutal honesty about the political battle in washington.Robbins plays the right-wing politician perfectly portraying a crooked yuppie business man willing to do anything to get elected to the US Senate a must see film one of the best films of the decade.