Basic Film Information

• Release date: September 4, 1992
• Director: Tim Robbins
• Writer: Tim Robbins
• Actors: Tim Robbins, Giancarlo Esposito, Ray Wise, Gore Vidal, John Cusack, Peter Gallagher, Alan Rickman, Susan Sarandon, James Spader, Fred Ward

Synopsis 

Documentary-style look at the fictional Senatorial campaign of Bob Roberts, an arch-conservative folk singer turned politician. This political satire includes several original songs co-written and performed by writer/director/star Tim Robbins, and cameo appearances by other stars as reporters and news anchors.

Contemporary Reviews

• Chicago Reader- “A sometimes brilliant if overloaded pseudodocumentary satire.”

• Entertainment Weekly- “This nose-thumbing mock documentary is so prescient, so astonishingly up-to-the-minute, it creates the eerie effect of having been ripped from tomorrow’s headlines.”

Background and Interesting Facts 

• Tim Robbins touted this project around the various studios for six years. Ironically, for a film about the American political process, it was the English production company Working Title that came up with the necessary funds.
• Alan Rickman helped Tim Robbins fund the production of Bob Roberts with his own money.
• A soundtrack album was due for release on Warner Bros. Records, but it was not released because Tim Robbins didn’t want the songs played outside of the movie’s context.
• At the very end of the credits there is the screen-filling four-letter word ‘VOTE’.

Critical Analysis

A major issue seen in the film Bob Roberts is corruption in the government and the lengths that some are willing to go in order to win. The way that the corruption is handled is far different than in the film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Bob Roberts uses its documentary style to convey the corruption in an indirect fashion. For example, we have the reporter Bugs Raplin who is trying to expose Bob Roberts’ for being a fraud throughout the film. Specifically, he is working to show the public that the Broken Dove anti-drug charity is a scheme in order to better his own welfare. Furthermore, the audience is shown how misleading that Bob is about almost every aspect of his campaign. When Bob Roberts is a guest on the comedy show, he changes up what song that he is going to sing that clearly is to give an endorsement to his campaign.

A major area that the film shows the audience the lengths in which Roberts is willing to go through to win is when he goes through his “assassination attempt.” At first, the public is lead to believe that Bugs was the one who shot Bob Roberts but it is later revealed that Bugs could not have shot him due to his cerebral palsy and his inability to properly use his right hand. It remains unclear on who attacked Bob Roberts until it is exposed that the gun may have been shot to the ground, rather than at Bob. This then plants seeds of doubt in the audience until there is the shot of Bob Roberts tapping his foot to the rhythm of his victory song.

At the closing of the film, we see the massive support that Bob Roberts’ followers have due to their celebration of Bugs Raplin’s death. When this occurs, a conclusion can be made is that it is possible to have too much support for a candidate and it is okay to question or doubt their legitimacy. Bob Roberts shows the extreme in order to highlight how important that it is that citizens do not mindlessly follow someone who is elected. The film presents this unfortunate instance where an innocent man is murdered due to someone taking the law into their own hands and contrasts the shock and horrible nature of this moment with the celebration of the supporters who are waiting outside of Bob Roberts’ house.

This film becomes even more relevant because of the issues that the United States is currently going through. Bob Roberts gave one impression of who he was to the public while he was actually a very different person outside of what he was willing to show. His upbringing was a major point of contention and is also one with politicians today. Just as Bob Roberts was willing to say anything in order to appeal to voters and get elected, politicians do the same. For example, Marco Rubio lied about his family fleeing from Cuba because of the rule of Fidel Castro, but they had instead left before Castro had taken over (Levy). This is significant because just as Rubio tried to use this lie to make it seem as if his parents were acting out of political defiance to appeal to voters, just as Bob Roberts uses his “homelessness” to do so. Although, Bob Roberts was technically homeless, he had run away from home just as Rubio did leave from Cuba, just not the way he portrayed it.

The issues and themes represented in this film are still relevant to this day which demonstrates the film’s staying power by being able to touch on universal topics that can be related to time and time again. Unfortunately, politicians being dishonest has been a regular part of American Politics for a while and the film uses extreme examples in order to highlight this fact but it gets the point across. Critics have evaluated this film with words like “overstuffed” but the amount of information placed into the film is useful in order for individuals to fully comprehend the message (rottentomatoes.com). Furthermore, it relates to how overstuffed and overloaded the information about politics are in general. It can be difficult for the average American to learn about what is really going on in the country’s politics when there is so much happening at once. In some ways the government uses that to their advantage, just like in the film, because they want certain things to fly under the radar without people realizing it.

Bibliography

“Bob Roberts.” IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2016.

“Bob Roberts – Movie Reviews – Rotten Tomatoes.” Bob Roberts – Movie Reviews – Rotten Tomatoes. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2016

“Bob Roberts.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 01 Dec. 2016.

Levy, Arturo Lopez. “Why Senator Rubio’s Lies Matter.” The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 14 Apr. 2015. Web. 01 Dec. 2016.