Bob Roberts 1992

[7.7/10] There are parts of Bob Roberts that feel almost scarily prescient and salient. Nearly three decades later, the idea of the conservative rebel, a well-moneyed entertainer posing as the common man and complaining about a scary “other” threatening to undo the American way of life is nigh-depressing in its resonance to the modern day. Bob Roberts’ songs could be played at GOP rallies today, and nary a line would need to be changed. The fact that a political satire from 1992 still sounds so relevant right now is, in and of itself, an indictment of the current moment in American government.

But there are also parts of it that feel strangely flipped from the modern day. Much of the film’s more serious side (and talking head interviews with Gore Vidal using the slight conceit of a longstanding Democratic Senator to enunciate his views) builds to an allegation of, well, a Deep State conspiracy in favor of Republicans. While so much of the viewpoints, the complaints, the attacks, and the type of figures and responses that filter their way through the political sphere seem familiar, who fears the CIA and FBI and other security apparatuses in the USA has shifted markedly. That gives Bob Roberts’s unraveled scheme an odd vibe today.

Then there are the parts of the movie that, while not dated exactly, mark it as part of a particular time in a way that its ideas are much less so. The film frames its key conflict as a clash between the advent of 1980s Reagan-style conservatism and the legacy of 1960s JFK-influenced counter culture liberalism. While that tug of war is still with us in a sense today, the terms and figureheads have changed, making that aspect of the film’s thesis come off more like a time-capsule of the shape and form of this particular version of it, even as it captures more universal, or at least broader philosophical skirmishes that remain as live as ever.

That tack works with the funniest conceptual element of Bob Roberts -- the ironic notion of the title character using Bob Dylan and other protest folk trappings in service of a rock-ribbed conservative agenda that Dylan and his cohort would abhor. There’s something both amusing and a little bizarre to it, like Paul Ryan loving the band Rage Against the Machine. The combination of that counter culture style and that neocon message makes for an odd mixture, but that’s the comic and dramatic point.

In truth, Bob Roberts works better in the guise of the former than the latter. By mostly playing the guitar-strumming senatorial candidate shtick straight, the movie wrings laughs about the absurdities of his media coverage, adoring fans, dirty tricks, and his very existence. Tim Robbins, who wrote, directed, and starred in the film plays the part to perfection, adding certain layers, both comedic and more malevolent, to the stuffed shirt and million dollar smile. With him at the center, the film’s humor is nicely calibrated, holding a fun house mirror to real life politics just enough to where the film’s jokes are funny but its barbs still ring true.

Much of that calibration comes from the film’s mockumentary style. Applying a This Is Spinal Tap lens to a political campaign is arguably not the most novel concept, but it’s certainly a parsimonious one. In the same way that Rob Reiner and Christopher Guest’s rock band film juiced the absurdity and peculiar dynamic of a music tour, Robbins channels the same energy here, from the musical interludes to the shared gag about the lead characters not being able to find where they’re supposed to be. The documentary conceit helps underplay some of the film’s most outsized moments, capture the sense of chaos and insanity when the shit hits the fan, and give the presentation an extra layer of realism that helps sell its point and message.

That message is not exactly subtle. At around the halfway mark, Bob Roberts starts to become more serious, and earnestly spins its conspiracy-minded, fall of democracy polemic from the kindling of its yuks. It’s an odd transition, though not exactly an unearned one, as Robbins’ mastery of tone is good here. This isn’t a film with much pathos in it, but one that invokes real events just enough to where it can play things seriously when it wants to.

Much of that comes from Giancarlo Esposito (the future Gus Fring of Breaking Bad), as Bugs Raplin, an investigative reporter trying to get to the bottom of Roberts’s smokescreens and potential malfeasance. The film is a star-studded affair from top to bottom, with quality turns from pros like Ray Wise and Alan Rickman, the aforementioned homespun pontifications of Gore Vidal, a convincing ersatz Lorne Michaels by way of Bob Balaban, and even bit parts for the likes of a young Jack Black and Helen Hunt. But it’s Esposito who steals the show, delivering an award-worthy monologue with a passion and conviction that sells the severity and stakes of all this.

The catch is that from the vantage point of the new 20s, Bob Roberts puts the emphasis on the wrong part of the manufactured candidate equation. When the film gets deadly serious, it does so in the name of a critique of the military industrial complex, and its hold on the American government. It does so in the name of backroom deals and dastardly schemes to win the voters’ sympathies at any cost. It does so in the name of coldly-calculating operatives pulling just the right strings and greasing just the right palms to subvert democracy and slant its benefits in their favor.

It’s not that those things have gone away from politics in the many years since the film’s 1992 release. While parts of the film come off a touch too ham-fisted or tin foil hat-wearing, there’s still intimations and allegations of such behind-the-scenes malfeasance. But what Bob Roberts, and a hell of a lot of other people in the real world, missed is that you wouldn’t really need such machinations in the future.

Instead, we live in an age where you can string folks along with a similar kind of faux-folksiness, rile up the electorate so long as you’re attacking the right people and speaking with a tone of grievance, and promote a sense of wanting to return the good old days before everyone who isn’t like you messed things up. Rather than its hand-wringing over Machiavellian plots, the part of the movie that feels most chilling is its more explicitly comedic early going. It’s there, where the regular insults and hatred are made so colorful they’re entertaining, where real ideas drown amid media-friendly fluff, and where a wealthy entertainer claims the plight of the common man, that the ridiculousness doesn't seem so ridiculous anymore.