Bob Roberts 1992 Review
By Rita Kempley Washington Post Staff Writer
Tim Robbins could have been high on Bill's Big Bus fumes or GOP convention balloon gas when he created "Bob Roberts," a startlingly prescient satire of American politics. Robbins wrote, directed and stars in this gleeful tirade against today's politicians as flag-flapping, poll-taking pop culture icons. Filmed in the mock-documentary style pioneered by acknowledged mentor Robert Altman, it does for baby-kissing phonies what "This Is Spinal Tap" did for heavy metal poseurs.
Robbins tends to go on longer than necessary, but then so have some acceptance speeches in recent memory. Perhaps the neophyte director was responding to a ringing in his ears: "Four more reels, four more reels ..." In any case, the nature of parody is not sparing. The nature of parody is to jump in barefoot and stomp like a grape picker, which Robbins most assuredly does.
Robbins, who wears his politics on his lapel button, is an accomplished Right-baiter, so accomplished that Dan Quayle would think aspiring senator Bob Roberts was just another guy with family values. Roberts is, in fact, a folk-singing businessman whose anti-welfare, anti-drug message plays to the fears of his mostly yuppie audiences. Though his music spoofs the works of Bob Dylan, Roberts more closely recalls a melding of Pat Boone, Pat Robertson and T. Boone Pickens. And yes, David Duke.
Bob, as he prefers to be called, engages in a mudslinging, media-manipulative campaign against the decent Pennsylvania incumbent, Sen. Brickley Paiste (Gore Vidal). Paiste, the story's conscience, movingly, convincingly played by Vidal, attempts to tackle the issues -- homelessness, education, child care, jobs. But the people of the Keystone State are as readily seduced by Bob's charms as the farmer's daughter in a traveling-salesman joke.
Bob, who stumps from a bus called Pride, talks about "traditional American values," emcees beauty pageants, gives good sound bites and smiles like dawn depended on the shine of his dental work. He blames the godless, the shiftless and the bleeding hearts, but adroitly dodges the issues. We know virtually nothing about Bob -- or Holly, his silent, also smiling blond wife -- except what we learn in a few unguarded moments caught by the ostensible documentary film crew. These tell us he's an all-round stinker.
Counseled by a busload of tireless and savvy boosters, Bob is careful to curry the black vote with a stop at a church to praise the Lord and sing the gospel. Still, aside from a woman TV producer and a handful of scruffy longhaired protesters, the only people who really see through Bob are two black journalists -- the hostess of "Good Morning, Philadelphia" and a scrappy reporter from the Troubled Times who uncovers Bob's ties to the Iran-contra and House banking scandals. The Times' Bugs Raplin (Giancarlo Esposito) is a touch rabid, but he is at least doing his job. The remainder of the Fourth Estate, represented by a half-dozen anchor boobs, thrives on the sound bites and photo ops provided by the Roberts team.
Robbins's real-life soul mate, Susan Sarandon, is the silliest of these nitwits, as a TV anchor who is so tickled by a colleague's lame riposte she can't keep a straight face through a report on the homeless. James Spader, Peter Gallagher, Pamela Reed, Fred Ward and Helen Hunt are also among the hilariously superficial broadcasters. Their joint IQ roughly equals that of a patch of melons. The networks and their corporate owners also come in for a sound thrashing when Bob travels to New York to guest-host a comedy show called "Cutting Edge Live." Bob plays the saxophone. NOT.
Robbins, delivering an adroitly oily performance, also won equally vivid portrayals from his well-chosen cast -- especially Alan Rickman as the former CIA operative who manages Bob's campaign, along with Ray Wise as Bob's smarmy spin doctor. Canadian actress Rebecca Jenkins gives the most sincere performance as a campaign aide who's beginning to have her doubts about her idol.
Robbins clearly learned much from the masterly Altman while starring in "The Player." As a writer and director, he draws on his actor's insights into character -- though he is no intimate of subtlety. He has a tendency to use a harpoon on the fish in his barrel.
The lyrics of Bob's songs, which he wrote to his brother David's music, are insidiously silly, but Roberts's fans are nevertheless rapt as they sway to the strains of "This Land Was Made for Me." Their neofascistic pupils widen as they join in on the refrain, "What's Right is right, what's Left is wrong." Robbins, who performs his own fervently hokey versions of these tunes, also spoofs the music video genre in "Wall Street Rap" and the prophetic "I Want to Live."
A welcome injection of venom, "Bob Roberts" pursues an agenda that is sometimes as moonbeamist as Jerry Brown's and oftentimes as self-congratulatory as its own scorned protagonist. In a closing sweep of the Washington monuments, the camera settles somewhat presumptuously on a quote chiseled into the Jefferson Memorial -- "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against any form of tyranny ..." Sometimes we all have our flags to wave. "Bob Roberts" is rated R for adult themes.
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By Rita Kempley Washington Post Staff Writer
Tim Robbins could have been high on Bill's Big Bus fumes or GOP convention balloon gas when he created "Bob Roberts," a startlingly prescient satire of American politics. Robbins wrote, directed and stars in this gleeful tirade against today's politicians as flag-flapping, poll-taking pop culture icons. Filmed in the mock-documentary style pioneered by acknowledged mentor Robert Altman, it does for baby-kissing phonies what "This Is Spinal Tap" did for heavy metal poseurs.
Robbins tends to go on longer than necessary, but then so have some acceptance speeches in recent memory. Perhaps the neophyte director was responding to a ringing in his ears: "Four more reels, four more reels ..." In any case, the nature of parody is not sparing. The nature of parody is to jump in barefoot and stomp like a grape picker, which Robbins most assuredly does.
Robbins, who wears his politics on his lapel button, is an accomplished Right-baiter, so accomplished that Dan Quayle would think aspiring senator Bob Roberts was just another guy with family values. Roberts is, in fact, a folk-singing businessman whose anti-welfare, anti-drug message plays to the fears of his mostly yuppie audiences. Though his music spoofs the works of Bob Dylan, Roberts more closely recalls a melding of Pat Boone, Pat Robertson and T. Boone Pickens. And yes, David Duke.
Bob, as he prefers to be called, engages in a mudslinging, media-manipulative campaign against the decent Pennsylvania incumbent, Sen. Brickley Paiste (Gore Vidal). Paiste, the story's conscience, movingly, convincingly played by Vidal, attempts to tackle the issues -- homelessness, education, child care, jobs. But the people of the Keystone State are as readily seduced by Bob's charms as the farmer's daughter in a traveling-salesman joke.
Bob, who stumps from a bus called Pride, talks about "traditional American values," emcees beauty pageants, gives good sound bites and smiles like dawn depended on the shine of his dental work. He blames the godless, the shiftless and the bleeding hearts, but adroitly dodges the issues. We know virtually nothing about Bob -- or Holly, his silent, also smiling blond wife -- except what we learn in a few unguarded moments caught by the ostensible documentary film crew. These tell us he's an all-round stinker.
Counseled by a busload of tireless and savvy boosters, Bob is careful to curry the black vote with a stop at a church to praise the Lord and sing the gospel. Still, aside from a woman TV producer and a handful of scruffy longhaired protesters, the only people who really see through Bob are two black journalists -- the hostess of "Good Morning, Philadelphia" and a scrappy reporter from the Troubled Times who uncovers Bob's ties to the Iran-contra and House banking scandals. The Times' Bugs Raplin (Giancarlo Esposito) is a touch rabid, but he is at least doing his job. The remainder of the Fourth Estate, represented by a half-dozen anchor boobs, thrives on the sound bites and photo ops provided by the Roberts team.
Robbins's real-life soul mate, Susan Sarandon, is the silliest of these nitwits, as a TV anchor who is so tickled by a colleague's lame riposte she can't keep a straight face through a report on the homeless. James Spader, Peter Gallagher, Pamela Reed, Fred Ward and Helen Hunt are also among the hilariously superficial broadcasters. Their joint IQ roughly equals that of a patch of melons. The networks and their corporate owners also come in for a sound thrashing when Bob travels to New York to guest-host a comedy show called "Cutting Edge Live." Bob plays the saxophone. NOT.
Robbins, delivering an adroitly oily performance, also won equally vivid portrayals from his well-chosen cast -- especially Alan Rickman as the former CIA operative who manages Bob's campaign, along with Ray Wise as Bob's smarmy spin doctor. Canadian actress Rebecca Jenkins gives the most sincere performance as a campaign aide who's beginning to have her doubts about her idol.
Robbins clearly learned much from the masterly Altman while starring in "The Player." As a writer and director, he draws on his actor's insights into character -- though he is no intimate of subtlety. He has a tendency to use a harpoon on the fish in his barrel.
The lyrics of Bob's songs, which he wrote to his brother David's music, are insidiously silly, but Roberts's fans are nevertheless rapt as they sway to the strains of "This Land Was Made for Me." Their neofascistic pupils widen as they join in on the refrain, "What's Right is right, what's Left is wrong." Robbins, who performs his own fervently hokey versions of these tunes, also spoofs the music video genre in "Wall Street Rap" and the prophetic "I Want to Live."
A welcome injection of venom, "Bob Roberts" pursues an agenda that is sometimes as moonbeamist as Jerry Brown's and oftentimes as self-congratulatory as its own scorned protagonist. In a closing sweep of the Washington monuments, the camera settles somewhat presumptuously on a quote chiseled into the Jefferson Memorial -- "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against any form of tyranny ..." Sometimes we all have our flags to wave. "Bob Roberts" is rated R for adult themes.
Back to articles