Shafer combines mock interviews (both with some of the actual people involved and with actors standing in for the actual people) with archive footage from Shafer's appearances on talk shows like Donahue, The Maury Povich Show and The Jerry Springer Show (along with an early appearance on Dance Fever) and recreations of events like his Playgirl photoshoots, his "fantasy date" with a Playgirl reader and the death of his friend Pledge Cartwright (played by actor Bill Brochtrup) of an AIDS-related illness to relate the story.

Variety gave Man of the Year a generally favorable review, calling the film "pleasant to watch and intermittently clever.

The San Francisco Chronicle was far harsher, deriding the film as a "vanity" production and complaining "There's no shape to Man of the Year, no forward movement.

"[4] The New York Times, however, found the film "gently satirical"[5] with the use of real clips from Shafer's various talk show appearances creating a "tone of vertiginous loopiness.

"[5] The Times also saw the metaphor in Shafer's experience to the pressure that society put on gay people to pretend to be straight.