Robin Williams plays Tom Dobbs a political comedy show host. He enjoys huge popularity ratings. During one of this shows, his audience asks his to run for President of the USA. After that, he receives millions of emails asking him to run for the President of the USA. Finally, Tom Dobbs takes the plunge and is pitted against 2 formidable rivals( one Democrat & one Republican). Dobbs takes his candicacy seriously and goes about the campaigning. His speeches are laced with digs at the American political system. His speech at the presidential debate is very interesting and entertaining.
People like his speech since he manages to keep the audience laughing and make serious points simultaneously Eleanor Green( played by Laura Linney) worked at Delacroy Systems, a company which makes voting machines. Delacroy had been given the contract of providing voting machines for the to-be held elections. However, Eleanor ends up finding a bug in the computer software during testing. She mails the CEO of her president, but is asked to keep her mouth shut since the contract is already awarded and it’s too late to make a change. Admitting the bug would amount to destroying the company. However seeing that she is obstinate, she is dismissed from her job by her boss.
Finally, he ends up winning the election as an independent candidate. A comedian becomes the president of the USA !!!. Eleanor is convinced that this is a result of the computer glitch. And she finds the root cause. Eleanor finally manages to meet Dobbs and tells him that he is not the person people elected to be President of USA. Dobbs is heartbroken but very honest. Eleanor likes Dobbs’ honesty and integrity. He wants to inform the public but before that Delacroy Systems discloses to the press that Eleanor Green was undergoing treatment for drug addiction. Obviously this was all pre-planned.
Allegations spring around affair between Dobbs & Eleanor. Finally truth trumps and Dobbs announces on a show that he was elected the President of the USA. Allegations against Delacroy systems are investigated and proved to be correct. As a result re-elections are held. Dobbs however refuses to contest since he believes that he is better off doing political comedy shows. Plus points The movie show’s that Dobbs is not obsessed with power once he gets elected as the president. There’s a lot of honesty and sincerety to him. Very good comedy. Some jokes are quite dirty however. Some are quite difficult to understand. However I did find a few points in the movie too hard to be believed. First of all, I can’t accept that Eleanor’s access to the company’s systems had not been revoked once she is fired. Too much to digest. Secondly, they should have come up with something better than alphabetical order( Double B’s, Double L’s etc) to explain the malfunctioning software. All in all, a decent watch.