Rent Bob Roberts (1992)

Too close to the truth - Bob Roberts review by CP Customer

Knowing the events that occurred 2 years after the films release, the Pennsylvania elections of '94, this film is very prophetic. An excellent mock-umentarty.

Folk You - Bob Roberts review by griggs

Somewhere between a joke and a warning, Bob Roberts has aged into a comedy that is barely a comedy at all now. What Tim Robbins made in 1992 as a political mockumentary now plays like a horribly plausible rehearsal for the world we ended up with. Not so much ahead of its time as filed under the wrong genre.

Robbins is terrific as the grinning folk-singer chancer, because he understands the key thing about men like Bob Roberts: they do not need to make sense, they just need to scan well on camera. Alan Rickman, as his campaign manager, is the perfect accomplice — watchful, dry, keeping the whole circus airborne with minimal effort. The songs are the film’s sharpest weapon: Dylan’s earnest troubadour pose, same costume, opposite politics, twice the cynicism.

What really makes it bite, though, is the mockumentary form. The cameras are not exposing the con. They are part of it, helping package, frame and sell the lie. That is the bit that now feels genuinely chilling. Less satire now than diagnosis.

Yes Senator. - Bob Roberts review by Steve

Inevitably divisive satire aimed at the Machiavellian strategies of the Republican political machine in the US. This is set during the Presidency of Bush the Elder and what may have been slightly exaggerated for comic effect, now feels like understatement. It's clever and insightful, but not all that funny and maybe even demoralising.

Writer/director/star Tim Robbins also co-wrote the songs. He plays a right wing folk singer who is rolling back the liberal attitudes of the '60s counterculture with charisma and smart messaging taken from advertising. And then he runs for the Senate. This is politics as showbiz and by now everyone is thinking of Donald Trump.

Today, most of this is commonplace. The film got media attention because there is a fake assassination... which Robbins tried to play down. The candidate's appeal is a mix of small state/low tax conservatism for the wealthy, and divisive hate for low information voters... and this is all slowed down so we see how the method works.

There is interest in the folk songs, with the troubadour politician like Bob Dylan in reverse, singing tracks such as The Times Are Changin' Back. There are fun cameos from Hollywood liberals. It's acutely observed, but it's hard to know who this is for; maga will dismiss it as propaganda, while for the left this is your worst nightmare.