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Movie Review: World’s Greatest Dad ( *** )
World’s greatest, huh? Well, we’ll see about that.
But one thing we can say about the surrealist fable, World’s Greatest Dad, in advance: you will be uncomfortable. And should be, considering the subject matter. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
That’s because the third feature film from ex-comedian writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait (Shakes the Clown, Stay) is a deadpan dark dramedy that wears its cynicism proudly and seems designed to induce cringes and gasps as well as laughs. Especially during the opening reels.
Robin Williams stars as Lance Clayton, who also narrates, a high school English teacher whose poetry class is anything but popular or well attended. He’s divorced and he’s a failed (that is, unpublished) novelist, one with a huge collection of publishers’ rejection letters.
This single dads’s doormat tendencies dealing with others extends to his own off-putting son, Kyle. Thus the film’s title, meant to be ironic.
Kyle, the hostile, sex-obsessed teenager played by Daryl Sabara of the Spy Kids trilogy, holds just about everything and everybody in contempt, and his father pretty much takes whatever this obnoxious kid dishes out. Some will sympathize with the dad’s hands-off approach, some will find it contemptible. But this tolerant, empathetic dad just goes on tacitly and passively endorsing his insolent son’s behavior with his unconditional love.
Then something shocking and tragic happens that will not be revealed here except to say that it allows Goldthwait to examine what we might call the collective-grief industry. It also drastically alters the way father and son are seen by everyone they know, and events conspire — with quite a bit of help from Williams’ Lance — to bring a degree of professional and personal success to Lance that he has always sought, but in an almost unimaginably perverse way.
Goldthwait’s intention, as he explores our obsession with celebrity, is to push the taste envelope, twisting movie conventions and our expectations until they do do his bidding. And just when we’re about to dismiss the premise and narrative as just too outrageous to engage our sympathies, Goldthwait and Williams press on, thoughtfully collaborating and forcing us to see things in a different light. And I mean different. We find ourselves thinking about the ways in which we decide just what’s important.
WGD succeeds as a satirical work that’s brash and original and twisted. Savagely funny in spots, it’s still certainly not for everybody. But it deserves an adventurous audience that’s likely to be appreciative.
Williams has fronted his share of bad movies of late (Man of the Year, RV, License to Wed) that either allowed or pushed him to give ineffective, over-the-top performances. But WGD has the kind of edge that makes us sit up and take notice and Goldthwait manages the not inconsiderable task of getting from Williams as the sympathetic protagonist an adroitly modulated performance that’s terrifically assured and disciplined. Williams’ lead turn brims with fascinatingly conflicting emotions, never more so than in one amazing scene in which, during a television appearance, Williams shows us the very thin line that separates laughing and crying.
This distinctive and compelling work reminds us of what Williams can do and makes us look forward to whatever comes next from Goldthwait’s remarkable directorial voice.
World’s Greatest Dad is a thought-provoking pitch-black comedy. Perhaps the most appopriate reaction to it, whether intended as disapproval or merely a description of its theme, is: “Good grief.”
Bill Wine – Celebrity News Service Movie Critic/ AHN
99 minutes
In theaters September 4, 2009
Rating:R, Comedy
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