Chris Knipp
08-30-2009, 03:40 PM
Bobcat Goldthwait: World's Greatest Dad (2009)
Review by Chris Knipp
Death to Creepy
The death of a young person can have something curiously attractive about it. Those who "live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse" exit cleanly, before wearing out their welcome, enduring "the long littleness of life" or revealing they couldn't live up to expectations. Promising youths cut off in their prime may attain greater fame because their early passing carves a more striking arc than a long life of quiet accomplishment. A youth who dies can be shaped into an icon.
Something like this plays around the theme of writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait's dark satire, World's Greatest Dad, with ironies so heavy scarcely a positive thought about humanity can peek through. For those who seek particularly dark comedies there may be much here to delight in. For the rest of us the film's thin conceit wears itself out too long before the end.
Lance Clayton (Robin Williams, in his usual hangdog dramatic mode) teaches English at a parochial school where his 15-year-old son Kyle (Daryl Sabara) is a misfit student with only one friend, the quiet Andrew (Evan Martin). Kyle, it turns out, is a vile boy, hostile and negative toward nearly everything, even music and movies, which he calls "gay," and with a mind full of kinky sex and a mouth full of obscenities, which he continually spews at everyone, including his classmates (except Andrew) and his father. The principal says Kyle must be sent to a school for problem children but Lance begs and gets his son one more chance. It's a relief when this distasteful young villain asphyxiates himself in the process of masturbation. Lance is mightily aggrieved, but he knows the world has been freed of a monster. (Of course all this is simply a stark caricature of an unsuccessful father-son relationship in a single-parent household.)
A writer who's never gotten one of his stories or novels published, Lance now embarks upon what will be his greatest literary success: an act of fraud. Repositioning the body to look as though Kyle has hanged himself, he forges a suicide note for the boy full of intelligent misery and sensitivity. The note eventually gets out at school via the Internet and Kyle, formerly loathed or ignored, is lionized so much Lance is emboldened to invent a whole diary for him full of suffering and philosophical platitudes.
Meanehile Lance has a queasy, never believable relationship with another teacher, the attractive Claire (Alexie Gilmore) -- except that Claire seems at least equally interested in a more popular teacher, Mike (Henry Simmons), a handsome young athletic black man who, oddly, teaches "creative writing" while Lance teachers poetry-writing. There is now a self-published edition of the "diary" produced by a counselor. The school walls are plastered with Kyle slogans from the book. Students wear Kyle T-shirts and Kyle photo pins. They seem to think of nothing but Kyle. When a punk girl (Lorraine Nicholson) asks Lance for a talismanic Kyle object, he gives her a Bruce Hornsby CD, though Kyle particularly disliked Hornsby. Lance's writing class fills up and Mike's empties out.
The point is well and emphatically made: people are just sheep. Death cults are stupid. No one liked Kyle and now they suddenly let themselves be conned into worshiping him. Lance is called to appear on an Oprah-like TV show and the fakery and exploitation of such appearances are skewered. Finally the time comes when Lance can't maintain the fiction any more (Andrew has never believed it: he knew Kyle too well to think he was secretly sensitive and intelligent). Here, the movie ends too easily (after being too tough) with a symbolic sequence of liberation and a cozy little gathering of like spirits.
It's hard to agree with those who've compared this with the witty, mordant Heathers. Surely this is far less fun. In comparison, the school in World's Greatest Dad doesn't really come very much to life. There is no wit, and nobody witty. Kyle's gutter language and negativity are turnoffs from the start. Robin Williams' performance is unappealing and without nuance. He has picked his share of dubious projects; to some this may seem a bold move. But in fact Death to Smoochy and One Hour Photo provided him with better roles in a dark mode. It seems a long time since the Dead Poets Society. Two poetry teachers, two performances: the earlier in a fine, sensitive film, the latest in a thin, mediocre one (and the performances to match).
Review by Chris Knipp
Death to Creepy
The death of a young person can have something curiously attractive about it. Those who "live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse" exit cleanly, before wearing out their welcome, enduring "the long littleness of life" or revealing they couldn't live up to expectations. Promising youths cut off in their prime may attain greater fame because their early passing carves a more striking arc than a long life of quiet accomplishment. A youth who dies can be shaped into an icon.
Something like this plays around the theme of writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait's dark satire, World's Greatest Dad, with ironies so heavy scarcely a positive thought about humanity can peek through. For those who seek particularly dark comedies there may be much here to delight in. For the rest of us the film's thin conceit wears itself out too long before the end.
Lance Clayton (Robin Williams, in his usual hangdog dramatic mode) teaches English at a parochial school where his 15-year-old son Kyle (Daryl Sabara) is a misfit student with only one friend, the quiet Andrew (Evan Martin). Kyle, it turns out, is a vile boy, hostile and negative toward nearly everything, even music and movies, which he calls "gay," and with a mind full of kinky sex and a mouth full of obscenities, which he continually spews at everyone, including his classmates (except Andrew) and his father. The principal says Kyle must be sent to a school for problem children but Lance begs and gets his son one more chance. It's a relief when this distasteful young villain asphyxiates himself in the process of masturbation. Lance is mightily aggrieved, but he knows the world has been freed of a monster. (Of course all this is simply a stark caricature of an unsuccessful father-son relationship in a single-parent household.)
A writer who's never gotten one of his stories or novels published, Lance now embarks upon what will be his greatest literary success: an act of fraud. Repositioning the body to look as though Kyle has hanged himself, he forges a suicide note for the boy full of intelligent misery and sensitivity. The note eventually gets out at school via the Internet and Kyle, formerly loathed or ignored, is lionized so much Lance is emboldened to invent a whole diary for him full of suffering and philosophical platitudes.
Meanehile Lance has a queasy, never believable relationship with another teacher, the attractive Claire (Alexie Gilmore) -- except that Claire seems at least equally interested in a more popular teacher, Mike (Henry Simmons), a handsome young athletic black man who, oddly, teaches "creative writing" while Lance teachers poetry-writing. There is now a self-published edition of the "diary" produced by a counselor. The school walls are plastered with Kyle slogans from the book. Students wear Kyle T-shirts and Kyle photo pins. They seem to think of nothing but Kyle. When a punk girl (Lorraine Nicholson) asks Lance for a talismanic Kyle object, he gives her a Bruce Hornsby CD, though Kyle particularly disliked Hornsby. Lance's writing class fills up and Mike's empties out.
The point is well and emphatically made: people are just sheep. Death cults are stupid. No one liked Kyle and now they suddenly let themselves be conned into worshiping him. Lance is called to appear on an Oprah-like TV show and the fakery and exploitation of such appearances are skewered. Finally the time comes when Lance can't maintain the fiction any more (Andrew has never believed it: he knew Kyle too well to think he was secretly sensitive and intelligent). Here, the movie ends too easily (after being too tough) with a symbolic sequence of liberation and a cozy little gathering of like spirits.
It's hard to agree with those who've compared this with the witty, mordant Heathers. Surely this is far less fun. In comparison, the school in World's Greatest Dad doesn't really come very much to life. There is no wit, and nobody witty. Kyle's gutter language and negativity are turnoffs from the start. Robin Williams' performance is unappealing and without nuance. He has picked his share of dubious projects; to some this may seem a bold move. But in fact Death to Smoochy and One Hour Photo provided him with better roles in a dark mode. It seems a long time since the Dead Poets Society. Two poetry teachers, two performances: the earlier in a fine, sensitive film, the latest in a thin, mediocre one (and the performances to match).