World's Greatest Dad (2009)

This is the time of year when I like to catch up on the movies I missed during the year. Most of these are out on DVD at this point, so my Netflix activity increases greatly in January and February. Anyway, World's Greatest Dad is one of those movies. It's directed by Bobcat Goldthwait and stars Robin Williams.

The film is a very dark comedy about a father, Lance (Williams), and his son, Kyle (Daryl Sabara). Lance is a poetry teacher at the high school Kyle attends. He is also a novelist, but he has never been published. All he wants, he says, is an audience. Kyle is an unintelligent, antagonistic, rude, unappreciative, foul-mouthed, sexist, homophobic, porn-addicted, compulsively-masturbating, overly-sweaty douchebag. Everyone at school hates him, with good reason. Lance loves Kyle, but (as he says himself) he doesn't much like him. This setup is extremely believable because of Sabara's mind-boggling performance. I haven't disliked a movie character this much since the Nazis in Schindler's List.

One night Lance comes home to find him strangled to death. I'll let you figure out how this happened. In order to spare his son some embarrassment, Lance forges a suicide note, making Kyle sound tender and misunderstood. The note gets into the hands of some of Kyle's schoolmates who think they are discovering something deep and profound about him. Seeing an opportunity to get an audience for his work, Lance writes Kyle's "journal," and has it published. It's a hit. Soon everyone at the school is extremely interested in Kyle's thoughts. Students and teachers alike praise him and talk of how his memoir has changed their lives.

Goldthwait's intentions are clear: he is making fun of our tendency to forget all the bad things about someone once he is dead. And to this end, he is effective. But what he has to say about Lance as a person, as the protagonist, is not as easy to discern. This is the film's biggest problem, I think, its confusion with what statement it wants to make. It ends a little too happily for the point about society to really sink in, and Lance's personal problems are barely considered.

The first third of World's Greatest Dad is wonderful. Robin Williams does a great job, especially in the first act of the film when he is reserved, shy, and insecure due to his failings. After Kyle dies, however, the movie loses energy. But when Sabara is onscreen, it is darkly hilarious (my type of movie). Kyle is such a jerk to his dad, and the way Lance responds is perfect, alternately giving in to Kyle's demands and telling him things like, "if you don't act right at dinner, I'll stab you in the face."

This movie is definitely worth watching, but there are many 2009 films that would be a better use of your time.