Bob Roberts

Bob Roberts is a 1992 American satirical mockumentary film written, directed by, and starring Tim Robbins.[2] It depicts the rise of Robert "Bob" Roberts Jr., a right-wing politician who is a candidate for an upcoming United States Senate election. Roberts is well financed, due mainly to past business dealings, and is well known for his folk music, which presents conservative ideas with gusto.

Bob Roberts
Theatrical release poster
Directed byTim Robbins
Produced byForrest Murray
Written byTim Robbins
Starring
Music byDavid Robbins
CinematographyJean Lépine
Edited byLisa Churgin
Production
companies
Distributed byParamount Pictures
Release date
  • September 4, 1992 (1992-09-04)
Running time
104 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$4.5 million

The film is Robbins' directorial debut, and is based on a short segment of the same title and featuring the same character that Robbins portrayed on Saturday Night Live.[3]

Plot

Bob Roberts takes place in Pennsylvania in 1990. It depicts a fictitious senatorial race between a conservative Republican folk singer, Bob Roberts (Tim Robbins), and the incumbent Democrat, Brickley Paiste (Gore Vidal). The film is shot through the perspective of Terry Manchester (Brian Murray), a British documentary filmmaker who is following the Roberts campaign. Through his lens we see Roberts travel across the state, performing songs about drug users, lazy people and the triumph of traditional family values over the rebelliousness of the 1960s. As the campaign continues, Paiste remains in the lead until a scandal arises involving him and a young woman who was seen emerging from a car with him. Paiste claims that she was a friend of his granddaughter whom he was driving home, but he cannot shake the accusations.

Throughout the campaign, reporter Bugs Raplin (Giancarlo Esposito) attempts to use the documentary being made about Roberts as a way to expose him to the public as a fraud. Raplin believes that Roberts' anti-drug charity, Broken Dove, is connected to an old Central Intelligence Agency drug trafficking scheme. As the election approaches, Roberts is asked to appear on a network's sketch comedy show. When Roberts announces that he will not be playing the song he had originally proposed, a dispute breaks out between the cast and producers of the show. This new song turns out to be nothing more than a thinly veiled campaign endorsement, and an angry staff member of the network pulls the plug mid-performance. As Roberts is leaving the studio, he is seemingly shot by a would-be assassin. Raplin, who has been causing problems for the campaign, is initially linked to the shooting, but he is later cleared when it is found that due to constrictive palsy in his right hand he physically could not have fired the gun. Following the incident, Raplin contends that Roberts was never actually shot and that the gun was fired into the ground.

The campaign is boosted by public support following the assassination attempt, and Roberts wins the election with 52 percent of the vote. Although Roberts claims that his wounds have left him paralyzed from the waist down, he is seen tapping his feet at a celebration party. While Terry Manchester is interviewing Roberts' supporters outside the new senator's hotel, a boy runs up shouting, "He's dead, he's dead, they got him!" When Manchester asks him what he is talking about, the boy shouts, "Bugs Raplin! He's dead! They got him!" A joyful celebration breaks out among Roberts' supporters, the shot changes to an image of his hotel room, and an upright walking shadow suggesting Roberts' profile passes the window before the lights go out. The film ends with a radio news report about Raplin's death at the hands of a right-wing fanatic and a shot of Manchester standing in the Jefferson Memorial, looking at the words, "I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man", inscribed there.

Cast

Style

The film's style is drawn from a number of real and mock documentaries, and its shots are crafted to create this effect, in many cases through the use of hand-held cameras. Not only does Roberts' character draw from 1960s-era iconography of Bob Dylan, it also contains scenes inspired by the 1967 documentary, Dont Look Back, made about the singer, employing a similar (although consciously constructed) cinema verité style.[4][5] The film also draws from Rob Reiner's 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap which Robbins states is one of his favorite films,[6] and directly references this during the scene in which Roberts gets lost in an auditorium attempting to find the stage before his performance. In the case of Gore Vidal's character, the majority of the lines were not scripted, and instead Vidal based his role upon his own political beliefs, and his real-life positions on many of the fictional election topics.[7][8]

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the film has a score of 97% based on 39 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10.[9] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 70% based on reviews from 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[10] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B+ on scale of A to F.[11]

Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, stating, "I like "Bob Roberts" – I like its audacity, its freedom to say the obvious things about how our political process has been debased." However, Ebert also stated that the thread about the investigative journalism doesn't work, commenting "if [the film] had been only about campaign tactics and techniques, I would have liked it more."[12]

While critics and audiences responded to this film by connecting Roberts’ character to various political figures, such as George H. W. Bush and Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, Robbins has said that the film related more to the political system in general than any specific politician. Much of Robbins' commentary addresses the role of the media in election campaigns.[13] Some have critiqued Robbins for his approach toward political satire, stating that his references to Reagan-era politics and the rebelliousness of the 1960s are simply too anachronistic in the context of the 1990s,[14][15] but others have praised it for framing political commentary as a Hollywood comedy.[16] In 2018, Robbins said "'Bob Roberts' came true", referring to President Donald Trump.[17]

gollark: Hmm. Well. It seems like you've gone through basically everything I might suggest and also a large amount of things I haven't, so no idea then.
gollark: More "potentially interesting things to do" than "challenge" but:- play some fun computer games- learn programming- read books (there are lots of authors providing books for free because of the whole situation, I find lots through reddit, and amazon's kindle unlimited is fairly cheap and has lots)- do... exercise of some sort... if you like that, I guess- learn about some other subject which interests you, there are loads of resources for stuff on the internet these days- drawing/other art stuff might be interesting for you if you're good at that- write things? There's r/writingprompts on reddit for that sort of thing- learning lockpicking is apparently quite cheap, might be fun, and is somewhat useful (and legal as long as you only do it on stuff you own, probably)
gollark: <@139559766744629248>
gollark: If you still just want "potentially interesting things to do" I can probably come up with some stuff.
gollark: What *sort* of challenge?

References
  1. "BOB ROBERTS (15)". British Board of Film Classification. July 9, 1992. Retrieved January 19, 2016.
  2. Tim Robbins Looks Back at 'Bob Roberts', 25 years later|EW.com
  3. AllMovie
  4. Ansen, D. (1992) "Rattling the Political Cage." Newsweek. 120 (10)
  5. Canby, V. (1992) "Bob Roberts; A Singing Candidate, A Happy Trail of Hate." The New York Times. September 2
  6. Roberge, C. (1992) "Tim Robbins campaigns for Bob Roberts and political change (interview)." The Tech. 112 (44) pg. 8
  7. Johnson, B. (1992) "The Stars and Snipes." Maclean's. 105 (37)
  8. Kauffman, S. (1992) "Ballotomanes." The New Republic. 207 (15) pp. 34-35
  9. "Bob Roberts (1992)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Retrieved August 25, 2018.
  10. "Bob Roberts". Metacritic.
  11. "Cinemascore". CinemaScore. Archived from the original on 2018-12-20. Retrieved 2019-08-02.
  12. RogerEbert.com
  13. Roberge, C. (1992) Tim Robbins campaigns for Bob Roberts and political change (interview). The Tech. 112(44) Page 8
  14. Troy, G. (1993) Bob Roberts. The American Historical Review. 98(4) pp.
  15. Wattenberg, D. (2001) "No Nukes". National Review. 53(5) p55-57
  16. Ansen, D. (1992) "Rattling the Political Cage". Newsweek. 120(10)
  17. Dowd, Maureen (February 3, 2018). "'Hollywood Is Changing', Says Its Veteran Activist, Tim Robbins". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 3, 2018. Retrieved February 3, 2018.
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