Bob Roberts
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DVD Cover Information Actor: Eva Amurri, Giancarlo Esposito, Merrilee Dale, Peter Gallagher, Tom Atkins Brand: ROBBINS,TIM DVD: Region Code 1 Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language) Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC Picture Format: 1.33:1 Running Time: 102 minutes DVD Release Date: 2001-08-14 Audience Rating: R (Restricted) Studio: Lions Gate Product features:
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Movie Reviews of Bob Roberts
Movie Review: "Are You a Communist?"
Summary: 3 Stars
Still weirdly prescient as it approaches its 20th Anniversary, Tim Robbins' "Bob Roberts" is a mockumentary that skews the far right with a very thick blade. Robbins (who wrote the script, directed and co-wrote the music with his brother) plays Roberts, a smug phony of a candidate running for a Senate seat in Pennsylvania. He's savvy, smart, plays a mean guitar and isn't above a slew of dirty tricks. His hapless opponent, Senator Brickley Paiste (played to perfection by Gore Vidal), is an over inflated relic who can't keep up with the sneaky slickness of Roberts.
Filmed in a documentary style, the cameras love "Roberts," who seems to have come from a parallel universe where Pete Seeger or Bob Dylan fought against the unions and war protestors instead of with them. Roberts tries to come off as a homey good old boy, when in reality he is a self-made millionaire who has turned his campaign bus into a stock-brokerage on wheels and alludes to making his money on insider trades. At night, he doubles as a singer whose hits blast welfare mothers and those who "complain and complain and complain." He's backed by a shady ex-special forces money man (Alan Rickman, sharp as ever in a mix of Dick Cheney and Oliver North) and Fred Ward as a snake-oil slinging campaign manager.
Only a small lefty newspaper reporter, (Giancarlo Esposito from Do The Right Thing) Bugs Raplin, seems to be onto Roberts' and the backroom dealing that went into Roberts' rise to power. This is where "Bob Roberts" jumps into the balck side of politics and away from the satire. But it does look like a Crystal Ball at some points, like when Roberts blows off a Philadelphia TV reporter who presses him for answers by asking her "Are you a communist?" Substitute "Why do you hate America" and the seen could have been scripted for any year between 2002 and 2007. Much of the movie runs the same course of events with different people (Karl Rove springs to mind).
"Bob Roberts" is also interesting in the prolific cameos offered up. Helen Hunt and Susan Sarando both drop in, as does John Cusak as a pseudo-Saturday Night Live comic angered at a TV appearance for Roberts on their show. Country star Kelly Willis makes numerous appearances as Roberts' female duet partner. (The mock music videos are a hoot, too.) Best of the drop ins, a very young Jack Black as an obsessive Roberts junky. For a movie shot on a shoestring ($60,000) and even sold tickets to a "Dinner With Bob Roberts" to attract extras to a special scene, it looks wonderful.
The lack of a 4th star is due to the DVD transfer, which is scratchy and not as sharp as it could have been. Otherwise, "Bob Roberts" is on a par with other modern poli-satires as Wag the Dog or Bulworth.