Oh my, this has to be the strangest film to come out in recent memory not directed by David Lynch. Though the appearance from a backwards dancing little person might have helped the film substantially.

"Man of the Year" is a political comedy. No, don't fall asleep on me just yet; it's political comedy that eventually stops being a comedy, like a wedding where the groom gets cold feet and bolts midway through the ceremony. Somewhere in the middle of this picture, all the participants decided to make their own separate movie, leaving the finished product chaotic, misguided, and borderline insane.

Universal Studios wants to sell you on a bright, fizzy liberal fantasy film, playing off the big idea: what if Jon Stewart won a presidential election? Now that's a potent jump off point for a wicked satire of current politics and a general pantsing of Washington's dirty little secrets; however, writer/director Barry Levinson has employed Robin Williams to be the flapping mouthpiece of this Libertarian sass, marking the first time the two have worked together since they spun gold in 1987's "Good Morning Vietnam" and failed boldly with 1992's screwy "Toys."

Back then, Levinson could simply turn on the camera and let Williams run with it, riffing himself into a sugar coma. Nearly 15 years later, Williams's ideas have slowed to a trickle, and Levinson somehow turns "Man" into a stand-up concert film with Dobbs's political frustration material not much different than anything you would find in a dank comedy nightclub. Tom Dobbs isn't a man with a plan; he's armed only with one-liners and upper-class rage. Williams has played this role time and again, and it's curious to see his synapses firing slightly slower these days, but Levinson only wants punchlines from Williams, not a thoughtful performance.

Dobbs is a limousine optimist finally handed the keys to the kingdom, but we never see what this T.V. personality can do with an opportunity of a lifetime. Levinson doesn't lend Dobbs any range outside of a sleepy prankster routine (even that wouldn't fly on basic cable these days), and it's a baffling choice to keep the character mired in quips when the premise could've run breathless with Dobbs in office taking on the establishment and facing the bitter wrath of his constituents. There's a huge effort to brand Dobbs a fearless critic of Presidential standards, but Levinson ignores the crucial payoff, spending a great deal of time scripting softball civic lectures for his cast to glibly deliver instead of actually demonstrating the change they promise after their big win.

Then there's the Laura Linney character.

I give Levinson credit for not taking the easy road with any picture he's made in recent years, regardless of their consistent lack of quality. "Man" furthers the grabby satiric bent of his 1997 send up "Wag the Dog," though he's chickened out in a major way for this feature. The entire Eleanor subplot in "Man" is a head-slappingly brutal miscalculation. Universal promises tears of laughter in their marketing for "Man," but the truth of the film is that it often resembles stone-faced outtakes from "Three Days of the Condor." That's not exactly a key that opens the laugh door.

By adding sobering thriller elements to the story, Levinson has derailed his own product and further strained his directorial capabilities, which, if you ask me, haven't been seen in good faith since 1991's "Bugsy."

If a flat-out, bug-in-the-phone, assassination-attempting conspiracy thriller in the middle of a kid-gloved political comedy sounds strange, it plays even weirder. One minute Dobbs is soothing the masses with his two-drink-minimum social ills shtick and the next Eleanor is being framed for cocaine abuse or thumping corporate goons in a mall parking ramp. I'm clueless to understand the filmmakers motivation here, other than to let the film run loose and free like other, better political pictures, and hope that someone pastes an "original!" tag on it down the line. "Man" has the kind of dizzying tonal changes that makes one wonder if a P.A. should've administered a breathalyzer test on Levinson during production.

Truthfully, there are about five different movies running around "Man of the Year" by the end of it, and they all suffer from neglect and a substantial amount of poor judgment. Perhaps Levinson should've picked just one subplot to build a film on. This is a movie desperate to inspire we the people to ache for change from our political leaders, but it's so bungled, the message is lost in the misery of such careless filmmaking.