Common Sense Note
Parents need to know that Bob Roberts fakes an assassination attempt, manipulates the media, and cultivates a gang of the disaffected who eventually kill a journalist. Bob also sings about stringing drug users up by the highest tree, preaches self-interest, and fosters anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, and anti-minority sentiment among his devoted followers ... all in the name of satire, of course.
Families can use the film as a springboard to talk about how they consume both political media and how they react to political candidates. Where do they get their news? Do they trust it? Do they look for alternative forms of media? What kind of political candidate are they attracted to? Do they notice when their fears are stirred by politicians? Are they savvy citizens as well as savvy media consumers? Do you think you could become enthralled with a politician?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Heather Boerner
Maybe it's no coincidence that Halloween and Election Day fall so close together. Both can be scary. So it's fitting that BOB ROBERTS offers a liberal horror story of sorts: What would happen if a fascist leader -- the kind with a funny mustache and a taste for genocide -- came back as Bob Dylan?
That's the question Tim Robbins asks and answers icily here. Robbins wrote, directed, and stars as the eponymous, clean-cut. and charismatic folk singer who soothingly sings of "taking my inheritance and investing it with pride" and urges his followers to take crack users and "string 'em up from the highest tree." He sings about welfare cheats and lazy, complaining liberals and attracts acolytes in the form of angry, young, rich, white boys. But can Roberts, who was raised on a commune and later forged a check to pay for college, evade criminal charges (that he's stolen affordable housing money to pay for drug-smuggling planes) long enough to win the election? Will his charisma hold out?
As in Wag the Dog, the answer is a foregone conclusion. But unlike that other '90s-era political satire, Bob Roberts is as humorless as a heart attack. Robbins doesn't make any attempt to get viewers comfortable with Roberts, and, in fact, invites derision. "Bob Roberts is Nixon, but he's shrewder, more complicated," says a skeptical newscaster, one of many such heavy-handed speeches in the film. "Here's a man who adopted the persona and mindset of a free-thinking rebel and turned it on itself: The rebel conservative. That's deviant brilliance. What a Machiavellian master."
Like most dystopian tales (1984 and Brave New World come to mind), Bob Roberts carries its premise to the most extreme conclusion. So here, African American men lose their lives, and the public is tricked into electing Roberts without ever hearing how he would govern. We already know the answer when that same newscaster asks, "Are we to believe that what Bob Roberts wants to see in America is a compliant and silent public which respects the wishes and actions of its presidents no matter how immoral or illegal?"
If that's Roberts' goal, then the film also offers an excellent opportunity for families to discuss the difference between image and substance in politics. At a time when political dissent is considered a blow for terrorists, families can discuss how they feel about their elected officials and how free they feel to challenge policy.
Families who enjoyed this film will also like Wag the Dog, either version of The Manchurian Candidate, or the theatrical adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Or families may enjoy the tale of a real-life political drama, Good Night, and Good Luck.
Rate It!
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ViolenceBob Roberts is shot; another character is killed off-screen. |
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Social BehaviorBob deceives the public to win the election; others kill a man because they suspect he shot Bob. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoSome drinking during the victory celebration; one woman appears to get in her car drunk. |
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