Bob Roberts (Shock) (1992)

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General		Extras
Category	Satire	Main Menu Audio & Animation Audio Commentary-Tim Robbins (Director/Actor/Writer) & Gore Vidal (Actor) Theatrical Trailer-1.33:1, not 16x9, Dolby Digital 2.0 (1:54) Deleted Scenes-17 (21:42) Biographies-Cast & Crew-Tim Robbins Gallery-Photo-4 DVD Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	1992
Running Time	102:17
RSDL / Flipper	RSDL (73:32)	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Tim Robbins
Studio Distributor	Shock Entertainment	Starring	Tim Robbins Giancarlo Esposito Ray Wise Gore Vidal John Cusack Peter Gallagher Alan Rickman Susan Sarandon James Spader Fred Ward
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$34.95	Music	David Robbins

    Whilst made in 1992, Tim Robbins' mockumentary about the eponymous folk singing, self-made millionaire who is campaigning for the US Senate seat for the state of Pennsylvania has some interesting parallels with the shallowness of subsequent Presidential elections in particular.

    Tim Robbins stars as Bob Roberts, a folk singer with a couple of hit albums to his credit who has decided to run for the US Senate in 1990 against the incumbent Senator Brickley Paiste (Gore Vidal). Bob Roberts is a young man with a vision who takes all the popular issues of the day and hits the campaign trail using song and music as his tool of choice. Brickley Paiste is the wizened old veteran who prefers the traditional approach to the campaign trail - but soon finds himself embroiled in a sex scandal. Still, Bob Roberts' campaign is not all beer and skittles either and his campaign chairman Lukas Hart III (Alan Rickman), already having been exonerated of any implication in drug and gun smuggling operations in Central America some years ago, finds himself embroiled in a failed Savings and Loan scandal. Hounded by offbeat journo Bugs Raplin (Giancarlo Esposito), the scandal is an attempt to bring Bob Roberts down. The film is basically done from the point of view of British documentary maker Terry Manchester (Brian Murray) and takes us through the campaign trail and allows us to meet some of the rather diverse characters that populate that world.

    Made on a rather limited budget, the mockumentary style of the film works well enough and does enable Tim Robbins to indulge in certain aspects of a documentary that would otherwise not usually be brought to bear in a feature film. The cast carry the thing off well enough, even if at times the whole thing descends into a bunch of friends doing improv, and the viewer can thoroughly indulge their "spot the cameo" predilections here. Stand out for me, like he is in so many of his films, is Alan Rickman who does a great job as the beleaguered campaign director. Taking what was a very small role, he only came into the film because of the studio's insistence on having another name actor in the film. He then proceeded to make the role a far more central one. Tim Robbins plays the smarmy, shallow, wanna-be senator to perfection and on the evidence here would be a shoe-in should he ever decide to pursue a political career. It has to be said that some of the cameos are a tad over-the-top, but overall the whole thing is done pretty well. This is not the sort of film where you would be expecting great cinematography, so of course we do not get it.

   Whilst no great fan of the mockumentary, this is one of the better ones I have seen and is a rather too-close-to-the-bone look at the incredibly shallow and self-serving American political system. If this sort of thing is up your alley, you may well find much to enjoy here - but you will have to live with some rather average audio and video to do so.

Video

    Obviously shot on a very limited budget, the transfer just exudes mediocrity. Now that might not be a bad thing given the mockumentary style of the film but it sure makes watching this something of a chore.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.44:1 according to PowerDVD. My eyes say that it looks 1.33:1 on my television, barring the "music video" components of the film which look closer to 1.50:1 (which apparently is the ratio the laserdisc version came in). The IMDB lists the original aspect ratio as 1.85:1, although some US reviews suggest that 1.33:1 is the preferred ratio of the director (in keeping with the mockumentary style of the film), so we have a large conundrum as to what the correct aspect ratio is for the film. It would appear, though, that we do not have the original aspect ratio, which is something of a disappointment. The transfer is not 16x9 enhanced.

    Since we are talking about a mockumentary shot in such a way as to emphasise image over substance, the transfer is all over the shop as far as the image is concerned. We have "traditional" film that is quite sharp and detailed, we have "video" film that looks blurry and lacking in detail and we have lots of use of shots of video monitors and the like which really are quite woeful looking. All of which is intended of course, but makes the overall transfer somewhat wearing on the eyes. Generally, the transfer can be categorised as having poor definition and pretty woeful shadow detail, and is hardly the most clear transfer you are ever going to see. If you want a good example of the poor definition of the transfer, just check out the sequence around 49:10, where the Venetian blinds run into Bob Roberts' forehead. What I find amusing is that filmmakers tend to view documentary film-making as having lesser production values than film, yet dozens of documentaries have shown that in general the production values are of necessity far greater than films. So why is it that when mockumentaries are made, the filmmakers aim for a grittier, more "realistic", less "filmy" image? Sure the issue is not with the transfer itself but rather the source material, but even allowing for that the transfer comes across as a rather tired one.

    The colours are also all over the place here, with some sections being wonderfully saturated and very nicely rendered, whilst other sections display a grotesque parody of natural colour, being heavily red saturated, exhibiting colour bleed galore and generally looking anything but what we would normally see in a contemporary documentary. The transfer lacks vibrancy in general and this does not aid the overall impression much either.

    There did not appear to be any significant issues with MPEG artefacts, although a lack of resolution in pan shots is fairly common throughout the film - presumably again the result of the source material. Thankfully film-to-video artefacts are kept to a minimum, with just minor indications of shimmer here and there - most notably in shots of the campaign bus. The cross colouration and moiré artefacting that is seen throughout the film is probably an intended consequence of the use of video monitor images. There are a nice collection of relatively minor film artefacts throughout the film, and the whole results in a rather tired looking transfer.

    This is an RSDL formatted DVD, still a relatively rare thing from this source it seems, with the layer change coming at 73:32. It is a very well-handled layer change that I only noticed on the second viewing of the film, coming as it does during a still shot of a newspaper. Completely non-disruptive to the film.

    Very disappointingly, there are no subtitles on the DVD. It is about time that some of the independent distributors realised that there are people in our community with hearing impediments and the presence of subtitles on DVDs are essential to enhance their viewing experiences.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are two soundtracks on the DVD, being an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack and an English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack. I listened to both soundtracks, neither of which are especially wonderful.

    The dialogue comes up quite well in the transfer and is generally easy to understand, although sometimes the dialogue does get a little indistinct. There did not appear to be any significant audio sync problems in the transfer, although there were a number of occasions where I got the distinct impression that the sync was just getting a little out.

    The original music comes from David Robbins, brother of the director/star/writer (and one of many members of the Robbins family to have a role in the film). Most of the music is in the form of the folk songs that Bob Roberts sings during his campaign concerts, and whilst short they often have a devilish sense of appropriateness that gets a little too close to the bone at times. They are perhaps a little too Amerocentric at times, but the message is well and truly understood.

    The biggest issue with the Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack is that at times it gets rather hissy, to the extent at times that it does detract a deal from the film. I would hazard a guess that this is the original soundtrack and has not been through any remastering at all. Other than that, there is nothing really memorable at all about the soundtrack. It seems a little congested at times and certainly the sound could have done with being a bit more open at times. The songs however come up quite well in the overall soundtrack. Your subwoofer and surround speakers will be very inactive during this film.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    A quite reasonable collection of extras has been assembled for this DVD release.

Menu

    With some nice audio and animation enhancement for the main menu, the menus are functional enough without having the broad distinctiveness of the very inventive menus afforded the Region 1 release.

Audio Commentary - Tim Robbins (Director/Actor/Writer) and Gore Vidal (Actor)

    Recorded in December, 1999, Tim Robbins was obviously thrilled that the film was going to get a DVD release. A pity that the enthusiasm got lost as the commentary got going. Too often falling into the "look who's on screen now" trap, there is some interesting stuff dotted through what is not one of the great commentaries of all time. Gore Vidal's contribution does not commence until about half way through and is obviously spliced into the overall commentary from a separate recording. His contributions are a little more character specific and are of a much more interesting nature.

Theatrical Trailer (1:54)

    Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, it is not 16x9 enhanced and comes with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. Basically it is a shocker with far too many film artefacts interfering with an inherently poor looking transfer.

Deleted Scenes (17) (21:42)

    Billed as Outtakes on the packaging and in the menu, these are not outtakes per se but scenes that simply did not make the final cut of the film - and for very good reasons. Mainly short obviously, given the number of scenes and the overall running time, the overall quality is appalling. Presented in the same format as the feature, they feature poor definition, poor colour, oversaturated colour, poor sound (that takes a while to cut in on every scene), plenty of film artefacts and quite a few video drop outs. Really of very, very limited value in the overall scheme of things.

Biographies - Cast and Crew

    Eight pages of decent notes about Tim Robbins.

Gallery - Photo (4)

    The four galleries present a total of 152 photographs relating to the film - many of which feature Tim Robbins. Interesting enough I guess but some annotation would not have gone astray.

DVD Credits

    Once again these annoyingly run straight after the film credits and even more annoyingly, that is where you stay (at least on my setup). Unless you intervene and push the enter button or the menu button, you will be watching the DVD credits as long as it takes for someone to wake up to the fact that these suckers are going nowhere. Basically another extremely poor conclusion to a film.

    The Region 4 release misses out on:

• Audio Commentary - Tim Robbins (recorded in 1993)
• Audio Commentary (not film specific) - journalists Alex Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
• Music Videos (3) - actually just links to the songs in the film
• Production Notes
• Television Spots (2)
• Much better menus

    The Region 1 release misses out on nothing apparently. Both releases are Full Screen, both are not 16x9 enhanced, both miss out on having subtitles and it seems that the audio and video transfers are quite similar. Accordingly, the Region 1 release is to be preferred owing to a better extras package. Interestingly the additional extras package does not prevent the Region 1 release being apparently contained on a single layer, single sided DVD.

    Whilst not a great fan of the mockumentary (as an indication I thought Best In Show to be a load of absolute cobblers and I am not a great fan of This Is Spinal Tap), Bob Roberts is actually a good take on the shallowness of American politics and the American political system, and is mildly enjoyable. Some of the film could have been done better, but the big problem is the lack of quality in the video and audio transfer. If you have the fortitude to endure the lack of quality, there is some reward here but honestly I can only recommend this as a rental in the first instance. Oh, and if you are worried about the M rating - don't be. It is only because of one instance of the word c***sucker that you could very easily miss anyway.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall