The Best Man For the '90s

By RICHARD CORLISS

TITLE: BOB ROBERTS

WRITER AND DIRECTOR: TIM ROBBINS

THE BOTTOM LINE: A sly musical comedy about a cynical right-wing politician is a tonic for jaded liberals.

Saturday Night Live may as well take the rest of the year off, because the candidates are doing their own standup comedy. It's as if George Bush and Bill Clinton were running not for President but for Tonight Show host. And the touchstone of their political humor is popular culture, which they may think is the only thing the electorate knows or cares about. So Dan Quayle hates Murphy Brown. Bush wants families to be "more like the Waltons and less like the Simpsons." Clinton, who does a better impression of Bush's prissy drawl than he does of Elvis, promotes his campaign with the unwipe-offable grin of a pitchman on a late-night infomercial. Newt Gingrich calls the Democrats' family-values policy the "Woody Allen plank."

All of which leaves little room for professional comedians, let alone filmmakers with a polemical ax to bury in some foolish politician's scalp. How can they parody something that is already the lowest form of public discourse?

Tim Robbins answers that question with a song. As writer, director and star of the hilarious mock-documentary Bob Roberts, Robbins argues that '90s anomie is the flip side of '60s idealism -- the perky music, so to speak, without the hammer-of-justice lyrics. The perfect candidate for this era of moral confusion would be a millionaire folk singer, a charismatic opportunist who can twist Woody Guthrie into Pat Buchanan by warbling, "This land was made for me."

It was surely made for Bob Roberts, a right-wing minstrel running for the Senate against a liberal incumbent named Brickley Paiste (and played by Gore Vidal, whose 1960 drama, The Best Man, addressed similar campaign compromises). With the help of a Mephistophelian campaign boss (Alan Rickman) and a mostly fawning corps of TV anchors (James Spader, Peter Gallagher, Susan Sarandon, Pamela Reed), Bob will do anything to get elected. Power is something a fellow could nearly die for.

Nearly 30 years ago, Vidal argued that an American tyrant would achieve power not by ranting his hatred a la Hitler but by crooning a demagogic lullaby. For some, Ronald Reagan, who could say mean things without sounding mean -- sometimes without sounding as if he meant them or knew what they meant -- was the proof of Vidal's theory. Bob Roberts is the next step. He sings jolly hate songs as his parents sang Michael, Row the Boat Ashore (a tune that Robbins' father Gil made famous as a member of the '60s folk group the Highwaymen). Bob Roberts is an anti-Bob Dylan; the anthem of this rebel conservative is Times Are Changin' Back.

But where Dylan howled and scowled, Bob smiles. In a wonderful vignette, Bob sits at a computer, absentmindedly singing one of his tunes, then notices that a documentary crew's camera is on him. He pauses a second, then flashes the smile. Like Clinton, Bob knows that no matter what the provocation, it's best not to seem annoyed. He'll be no Nixon. To blow his cool is to blow the campaign. Bob has perfected the notion of the dimple as political statement. And maybe he has no anger in him, which is to say no beliefs worth defending with impolitic righteousness. As Paiste says of Bob, "I don't have any idea who he is. I don't have any idea what he's like. I don't think I'm supposed to have any idea."

As the star of Robert Altman's The Player, Robbins learned how to keep things smartly abustle. And in the manner of Altman's TV series Tanner '88, he sets an easily acidulous tone; Robbins is having fun poking fun. Ultimately, as if to prove paranoia is not unique to right-wingers, he blames Bob and his advisers for every political atrocity of the past decade -- and a few new ones, including framing a rabid fringe journalist (Giancarlo Esposito) who may have the goods on bad Bob. The crimes are listed not so much to push a leftish agenda as to clarify Bob's villainy for viewers who might be seduced by his style. Robbins, eager not to be misunderstood, has insisted that there be no sound-track album, since the satire in Bob's songs might get lost or perverted on pop radio.

But what happens when the butt of your satire co-opts your plot line? The Republican Convention could have been dreamed up by Oral Roberts -- or Bob. Folksy singers abounded in Houston, supporting party ideology with hymns to red blood, white bread and blue-tinted hair. There was country star Lee Greenwood, who has been married five times, appearing as the warm-up act for Barbara Bush on Family Values Night. If he had burst into Times Are Changin' Back, the cognoscenti's sniggers would have been drowned by cheers of the faithful.

Beware, Tim Robbins. You may have created a monster. Bob Roberts could become a media star or, in 1996, the next President of the United States. Satire has a way of ripening into prophecy.