Bob Roberts

Bob Roberts is a triumph in every respect: The editing is glorious, the use of music dazzling, the nebulous ending very true to life. [18 Sep 1992, p.3G]

Bob Roberts is the meanest, most outrageous movie to come out of the emasculated American left in a decade. It's a triumphant satire. [25 Sep 1992, p.9]

Robbins’s debut as a director is exceptionally accomplished. He shrewdly balances his sense of purpose with a flair for mischief. Read full review

Both a stimulating social satire and, for thinking people, a depressing commentary on the devolution of the American political system. Read full review

An over-strung last act aside, this is funny, brilliant and sickening all at the same time. Read full review

Many smaller details also hit home, and though it certainly is exaggerated all over the place, the film is dead on and plays even better now than in '92. Read full review

This Tim Robbins-helmed political satire about demogougery makes for an appropriate election-season re-release. Read full review

I like Bob Roberts - I like its audacity, its freedom to say the obvious things about how our political process has been debased - but if it had been only about campaign tactics and techniques, I would have liked it more. Read full review

Filmed in the mock-documentary style pioneered by acknowledged mentor Robert Altman, it does for baby-kissing phonies what This Is Spinal Tap did for heavy metal poseurs. Read full review

A smart, funny pseudo-documentary. Read full review

Bob Roberts not only invigorates a climate polluted by the usual presidential campaign bombast; it quickens the hearts of the disillusioned by reminding us that the left needn't always forfeit the bare-knuckled approach. [14 Sep 1992, p.47]

For all its flaws, Bob Roberts is a singular achievement, a political film in a time when moviegoers want anything but. It's a bold move. Vote Tim. [18 Sep 1992, p.G10]

Robbins is attempting too much here, but the 70 percent or so that he brings off borders on delightful. Read full review

A very funny, sometimes prescient satire of American politics, and of the comparatively small, voting portion of the electorate that makes a Bob Roberts phenomenon possible. Read full review

Robbins's gutsy directorial debut isn't seamless art, but so what? After a summer in Hollywood fantasyland, at last we have an American movie that rattles our cage-and pokes a sharp spear into the body politic. Now that's entertainment. Read full review

It does have flaws, but its confidence and courage in going against the grain of an increasingly conservative America are impressive. Read full review

Audacious, bracing, uncommonly timely, Bob Roberts would seem almost impossible to pull off. So it is very much to Robbins' credit as a filmmaker that he manages to do so while rarely getting preachy and never neglecting the importance of movement and excitement in keeping an audience involved. [04 Sep 1992, p.F1]

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. Read full review

Robbins, who scripted and directed, creates more than enough on his own. Bob's un-hackneyed character is the prime case in point. Read full review

Written by Robbins, the film is uneven. It drags in a few places and the ending is a little heavy-handed. But Bob Roberts is still an intelligent and accomplished satire, not bad at all for an actor turned director. [31 Aug 1992]

Like a relentlessly charismatic political candidate offering the moon, stars and a viable health-care plan, Bob Roberts promises much but ultimately fails to deliver. Read full review

Though a tad lightweight, Tim Robbins's comedy cuts through Hollywood political blather. Read full review

In its own way, the film is as smugly self-satisfied preaching to its left-of-center converted as the more over-the-top speakers were at the recent Republican convention. [04 Sep 1992, p.5D]

Like a political cartoon, Bob Roberts can sometimes be so overtly political that the humor starts to fade. Toward the end, especially, the movie loses some of its force by forcing the issue too far. But Robbins shows so much energy, intelligence and audacity in his directorial debut that it isn't hard to forgive his excesses. [25 Sep 1992, p.18]

Great satire (read most anything by Swift) must be capable of doing more than preaching to the converted, and, measured by that lofty standard, Bob Roberts may fall a bit short. [18 Sep 1992]

Its take on the political scene is unsophisticated, and its humor heavy- handed. Like any satire, it exaggerates, but it exaggerates the wrong things. [11 Sep 1992, p.C1]