BOB ROBERTS is a smart, funny pseudo-documentary about a conservative folk-singer who campaigns to become U.S. Senator for Pennsylvania, cloaking his extreme right-wing views in the radical rhetoric of the 1960s.
Directed and written by its star, Tim Robbins, the film began life as a sketch for "Saturday Night Live" in 1985. Much of it feels like an extended "SNL" gag (one of the funniest sequences has the would-be Senator appearing on a thinly disguised version of the show called "Cutting Edge Live"), but
Robbins has also clearly learned a lot from his work with Robert Altman on THE PLAYER.
Like Altman's best films, BOB ROBERTS builds a freewheeling, multi-layered portrait of its characters' world where what happens in the background of a scene is often as entertaining--and revealing--as what we're "supposed" to be looking at. And like THE PLAYER, Robbins's film is peppered with
cameos by celebrities including Susan Sarandon, Peter Gallagher and Fred Ward. Gore Vidal plays Roberts's opponent, an articulate, old-style Democrat whose campaign is tainted by allegations of an extra-marital affair.
Onto this hybrid of NASHVILLE and SPINAL TAP Robbins has layered a sub-plot worthy of J.F.K., featuring an investigative reporter played by Giancarlo Esposito. He claims to have evidence linking Robbins's right-hand man Lukas Hart, III (Alan Rickman), to S&L-financed drug-running, but pays dearly
for his discovery.
Although the conspiracy theory helps keep BOB ROBERTS moving, the real joy of the film is in the incidental details: songs such as "Wall Street Rap," the video for which features pin-striped financiers celebrating the joys of wealth; the recurrent Bob Dylan pastiches, including a Roberts album
titled "Bob on Bob"; and hilariously on-the-mark cameos from the likes of James Spader, as a vacuous local newscaster, and Bob Balaban, as the spineless producer of "Cutting Edge Live." leave a comment
