Bob Roberts (1992) on Netflix

R19921h 42mComedy Drama

A documentary crew follows Bob Roberts, a folk-singing conservative, through his insurgent Senate campaign against Brickley Paiste. Reporter Bugs Raplin tries to expose him as a fraud.

Netflix4.1/5
IMDb7.0/1015,040 votes
Rotten Tomatoes95%

Trailer

Plot summary

In Pennsylvania in 1990, Bob Roberts, a well financed conservative folk singer, runs an insurgent Republican campaign for the Senate against the incumbent Democrat, Brickley Paiste. A British documentary filmmaker, Terry Manchester, follows the campaign as Roberts travels the state singing acoustic songs that carry far-right views on drugs, work and family. Senator Paiste believes his opponent is a manipulator with ties to the CIA, the military and the National Security Council. Investigative reporter Bugs Raplin tries to use Manchester's footage to expose Roberts as a fraud, arguing that the candidate's anti-drug charity, Broken Dove, is tied to a CIA drug trafficking scheme from years earlier, and pointing to campaign chairman Lukas Hart III's past in the Phoenix Program. Television anchor Kelly Noble questions how Roberts has turned a left-wing musical form into a vehicle for right-wing politics.

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Bob Roberts (1992)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

SPOILER
In 2018 Robbins said that Bob Roberts had come true, referring to President Donald Trump. After the attempted assassination of Trump in July 2024, a conspiracy theory claimed the attack was staged as in the film, and Robbins condemned it, writing that those denying the attempt was real are truly in a deranged mindset.
Robbins was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Leading Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy, and lost to himself, having also been nominated that year for The Player.
Most of Gore Vidal's lines in the film were not scripted. Instead Vidal based his role on his own political beliefs and on his real-life positions on many of the fictional election's topics.