To put it lightly, World’s Greatest Dad may be one of the most shocking things I have every seen. Not shocking in a “look at how much torture I can throw your way,” but in a “people really act like this” kind of way.
Robin Williams, in his best role for quite some time, plays Lance Clayton, a poetry high school teacher whose course is suffering, whose girlfriend keeps blowing him off, and whose son is the greatest monster to walk the earth (Daryl Sabara, no longer a cute Spy Kid). When tragedy strikes, Lance somehow finds it is the greatest thing that every happened to him.
I don’t want to talk too much about this film because that would give away so much of what makes it so special. In the last month we have had some great trailers, for movies like District 9, Inglourious Basterds, and In the Loop which intrigue you but don’t tell you too much about the film. World’s Greatest Dad has another spectacular trailer that undersells the movie. It’s probably the blackest comedy I’ve ever seen.
I do feel the movie gets carried away in its second half, blowing everything to its biggest possible extreme, but it also feels strangely authentic. I urge those who haven’t seen the movie to stop reading and go see it now, for I fear cannot continue without spoiling the best parts of the film.
The movie is a great study in our morbid fascination with the dead, especially when death comes unexpectedly. In the worst people you remember the best parts about them, and lay them to rest in the most delicate and painless way possible. This movie feels like writer and director Bobcat Goldthwait reacted so strongly to the public’s reaction to Michael Jackson’s sudden death that he went out and made this movie. It has a certain timely and timeless quality about it.
When Michael Jackson died, everyone was stunned, because he was only 50. Farrah Fawcett’s death earlier that day came with smaller impact because it was known she would die, but people didn’t focus on someone who was probably a genuinely nice person, and instead focused on the pre-white Michael Jackson. From recent years until his death, the public hated Jackson, and when he died, he was our hero.
The same applies to this movie. It is so twisted, so morbid, yet so true. The movie is set in Seattle, but you would only know that if you were a Seattleite. The movie never tells you, but one wonders if there is some deliberation in setting it there. Williams walks out of the Guild 45th and stares at a magazine stand downtown. Yet this made me happy, made me feel like there was an extra something in this movie for me. There are no shots of the Space Needle or of downtown at large, and the High School is no school I know of. But it is an interesting, deft touch.
People will go to see this maybe expecting a Disney comedy. When I first saw the poster, that’s what crossed my mind. This is a movie you are either totally for or really against, but no matter where you stand on the quality of the movie, you cannot dispute its important message about our culture and our times.
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