Man of the Year

Last night, my wife and I went to see "Man of the Year" with Robin Williams and Laura Linney. Both of us enjoyed the movie. We found it to be a light-hearted film. Having said that, the critics roasted the film. They gave it just awful reviews. We actually knew that before we went to see the movie, but we wanted to see a comedy and we have generally enjoyed Robin William's comedies. The critics point out that little of the story is new and that some of the key developments of the movie are highly improbable. Yeah, both of those points are true. In fact, at one point Laura Linney makes a big discovery. I found the discovery so absurd that I was not surprised that she was the only one to find it. But the bottom line for me is that we frequently laughed during the movie and walked out feeling good about the movie. As far as I am concerned that makes it a good movie!

I thought Robin Williams did an ok job. This was not one of his better movies, but I did not think he was bad either. I think very highly of Laura Linney, however this was not one of her better movies as well. Her character was not that well written. Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum and the rest of the cast did ok as well. Nothing too exciting.

One of the problems of the movie is that it tried to be a semi-serious political drama, a love story, a comedy and a suspense thriller all at the same time. Each scene seemed to take a different theme. It did not do a great job at any of these. Well, it was a good comedy and not very good at the rest. Oh, one other thing, there is a scene where a vulnerable single woman is attacked in her own home. I did not enjoy that scene, but it did not ruin the movie for me. Hmmm this is interesting, the more I write about this movie, the less I like it! Maybe I should stop now before I completely hate the movie. :-)

So in summary, I think you can enjoy this movie if you are in the mood for a light comedy, if you go to the theatre with low expectations, if you don't let some of the improbable events bother you, if you don't think too much during the movie and if you don't blog about the movie the next day! If you can do all of that, then you just might enjoy the movie. Quite a recommendation, hunh?