The Election is just the beginning...
A 2006 comedy/drama starring Robin Williams, Christopher Walken, Lewis Black and Laura Linney and written and directed by Barry Levinson.Tom Dobbs is the host of a successful political talk show. Always happy to take shots at that system he sees as broken, he has no shortage of material with the presidential election coming up. Then during his warm up act one day, an audience member suggests he should run for president. He laughs it off at first, but after a huge wave of support, he does put his name on the ballot, of course expecting not to win. The shocker? He does. Trouble is he owes his victory to a computer glitch in voting system marketed by Delacroy, a private company with a rising stock price. To protect their fortune, Delacroy executives want to keep the glitch a secret, but one programmer, Eleanor Green, wants Dobbs to know the truth. Can she get to him?
This film provides examples of:
- As Himself: James Carville, Chris Matthews, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler.
- Colbert Bump: A fictional example, and also an example of Stephen Colbert's faux South Carolina primary campaign taken to its logical conclusion.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Delacroy company, that created the voting machines, knew perfectly well about the glitch and does its damnedest to try to keep Green from blowing the whistle about it throughout the whole film.
- Expy: Tom Dobbs is essentially Jon Stewart. There's also a Casting Gag by having Lewis Black play one of Dobbs' supporters.
- Finale Title Drop: The very last thing the film shows before cutting to credits is a cover of Time magazine that named Tom Dobbs the "Man of the Year" as a result of his actions.
- Graceful Loser: Aware that he won because of the glitch, Tom uses an appearance on Saturday Night Live to graciously step down from the office of President-elect.
- Before the truth comes out, Pres. Kellogg bears no ill will toward Dobbs over his election loss.
- Genre Roulette: Something the marketing didn't show: While Dobbs' arc is pretty comedic almost all the way through, Eleanor Green's arc is a political thriller in the vein of All the President's Men. Critic consensus is that this was done well, though the comedy portions were received the best.
- How We Got Here: The entire film is told from the memory of wheelchair-bound Jack Menkin.
- Karma Houdini: Hemings and Stewart never get any comeuppance for having Eleanor drugged, while she is fired after having a meltdown at work and subsequently testing positive for several illegal drugs. She has no memory of the attack, and it never seems to occur to her that she was set up even when she finds the needle mark. They do, however, get sent to prison for covering up the glitch and trying to kill her.
- Leno Device: Tom Dobbs appears on Saturday Night Live during a "Weekend Update" segment with Amy Poehler and Tina Fey.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The film was advertised as pretty much a straight comedy, but is very obviously a comedy-drama, even veering into political thriller territory at times.
- Show Within a Show: Dobbs' political comedy show, which is where everything began.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Tom Dobbs runs as an Independent Party candidate during the elections, as a joke, and wins. Because of the voting machines having a glitch involving dual letters in the candidates' names. In reality, once the votes are recounted manually, it turns out that he never had the necessary votes to win so much as a single state. The United States of America is a pretty tough town for anybody running outside the Democrat or Republican sides.
- Take That!: Dobbs doesn't pull any punches against his opponents during the presidential debate, and his popularity in the polls skyrocketed for it.
- Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: James Hemmings and Stewart are played straight and not for laughs. Their plotline involving Eleanor Green creates such a sharp, dark contrast to the main plot involving Tom Dobbs that it's almost like it exists in another movie.
