Holding the film industry equivalent of impeachment proceedings would be too harsh, but don't be surprised if moviegoers vote with their feet and boycott Man of the Year, a sideshow about a TV comic elected President of the United States. Although Barry Levinson and Robin Williams collaborated with great success in Good Morning Vietnam back in 1987, here writer-director and headliner are guilty of committing the very crime they warn against -- namely, entertainers taking themselves too seriously.

Man of the Year is a case of false advertising because it's only one-quarter comedy. Plus many of the jokes pre-date the 1984 election cycle and seem leftover from the heyday of the Borscht Belt or a Friars roast. Feeling like the work of showbiz folk, arguably past their prime, who are trying to tap into the zeitgeist, it also has ambitions as a satire that takes aim at the supposedly shocking influence of special interests on America's political process.

The third bedfellow in this awkward compromise is the most jarring of all: the movie displays thriller aspirations by having a Silicon Valley programmer named Eleanor Green (Laura Linney at her most squirrelly) menaced because she knows the election results stemmed from a computer glitch. Topping it all off, Williams' Commander-in-Chief-elect falls for her, so there's a romance angle to endorse as well.

Only a filmmaker with the experience and hubris of Barry Levinson would try to cram all this under one tent. And the main reason it doesn't self-implode is that he's talented enough to make each portion seem just plausible enough. But of course competency is no guarantee of winning office or of being a successful public servant if elected.

Playing Tom Dobbs, an amalgam of Jon Stewart and Bill Maher (both are referenced), Williams looks supremely uncomfortable -- much more like a comedian trapped in a staid politician's body than an anarchic comedian playing a comedian pretending to be a politician. He's neither funny nor presidential enough. He's stifled.

After being dared by a member of his studio audience, Dobbs seeks the highest office in the land and wins thanks to new electronic voting machines. Eleanor Green knows that a bug in the program caused the results.  For selfish economic reasons, her employer -- whose public face is Jeff Goldblum's unctuous attorney -- doesn't want her to spill the beans.

The firm resorts to espionage to discredit Eleanor, who approaches Dobbs in the period between Election Day and his inauguration. The company then tries to silence her for good, but Dobbs -- a Mr. Smith for the new millennium -- believes (and digs) her. He wakes up from his delusional dream of being the most powerful man in the world during a guest spot on SNL's Weekend Update.

The primary reason a constitutional crisis was averted for this critic involved my hope that Levinson's intention was to mock his Hollywood peers from contemplating political careers. Yet in urging his colleagues not to grab at power, he diffuses his own. Dobbs can accept losing the presidency while gaining a girlfriend. We can't. Also helping: Christopher Walken performance as Dobbs' manager and some of Lewis Black's zingers as his chief gag writer. Black may be the cynical soul of the movie, but he's too caustic to attract the undecided and too old to capture the young demographic.

The key to a successful political party is a tent large enough to attract a majority. Levinson and company take this too far. If "make 'em laugh" is the mandate you were born with, trying to govern (or telling the public who should) is a losing platform.

(Released by Universal Pictures and rated "PG-13" for language including some crude sexual references, drug related material, and brief violence.)