| The
screwed-up parent at front and center in "World's
Greatest Dad" isn't that much worse than anyone
else who's tried, and failed, to cope with a foul-tempered
adolescent. He just happens to fail more creatively
than usual. And the adolescent just happens to be
a pig.
This piggishness resists direct quotation in family
newspapers; let's just say he hates everyone and everything
that isn't a vagina, and leave it at that. If the
movie's first half establishes anything, it's our
sympathy for Dad, who tries like crazy to form some
thin human bond with this blank-faced slab of hormones.
That isn't the whole story, of course - there's more
going on here than the age-old struggle between maturity
and its surly teen antithesis. That alone would be
too straightforward for a sick-puppy cut-up like Bobcat
Goldthwait, who marks his third go at movie writing
and directing after 2006's "Stay" (or "Sleeping
Dogs Lie"), about a gal who got intimate with
a dog, and the 1992 alcoholic-jester movie "Shakes
the Clown." So you can bet he has a few dark
tricks up his sleeve in "World's Greatest Dad."
For a while, the film behaves like a moderately nervy
high school satire. Lance Clayton (Robin Williams),
a sad-sack poetry teacher and perpetually unpublished
writer, has just mailed out copies of his fifth novel.
As he dreams of literary fame and glory, he slogs
through class time with an uninspired smattering of
pupils and copes with his churlish 15-year-old, Kyle,
played by Daryl Sabara without a hint of the old rug-rat
spunk from the "Spy Kids" movies.
The opening scenes delineate both Kyle's groin-specific
nihilism and the huge invisible "LOSER"
sign on Lance's face, which blanches in shock when
he learns that a handsome young co-worker (Henry Simmons)
got a piece into the New Yorker on the first try.
It's Williams' best close-up; in a millisecond, he
nails the envy and despair of being on the sidelines
when someone else succeeds.
Yet "World's Greatest Dad" concerns more
than Lance's personal and professional humiliation,
even as his girlfriend (Alexie Gilmore) bats her eyes
at Mr. New Yorker. Midway through, Goldthwait upends
the entire film and turns it into a pitch-black commentary
on the vagaries and seductions of modern media celebrity,
hinging everything on a twist so morbid it begs to
be played for laughs. And it is, scathingly, decked
out with a blood-red palette, a few whimsical figments
and lots of Bruce Hornsby jokes.
But two faults weaken the effect. One is an overreliance
on alt-rock montages (wailing "love is simple,"
when clearly it ain't); the other is a sudden, climactic
narrative switchback that muddies the tone with sentimentality
and blunts that "Heathers" edge. The closing
speech and climactic exploit are well shot - and bravely
acted, right down to Williams' socks - but they're
bogus. After leading the audience into some very inky
satire, Goldthwait backs off.
-- Advisory: Language, crude and sexual content,
some drug use and disturbing images.
By Amy Biancolli
SF
Chronicle, August 28, 2009
|
