World's Greatest Dad

World's Greatest Dad (2009), Bobcat Goldthwait

I'm surprised at this movie. Everything about it says it shouldn't work at all, and yet, somehow it does. This is, so far as I know, Bobcat's first job writing/directing, and aside from a few poor performances, he does a decent job. His ethos of "fuck style, let's just shoot it with the most basic set-ups possible" works. There isn't much he needs to do, either, to accentuate just how fucked up this film is (in a good way). This is one of the blackest comedies I've come across since Lolita (or quite possibly Elephant. No one else laughed at that? That was just me? Huh.) and I love this film for that reason.
The film stars Robin Williams as Lance Clayton, a failed novelist who has since learned to settle in mediocrity. He can't get his works published, his job teaching poetry at the local high school is under-attended and thus in line to be canceled, his art-teacher girlfriend Claire (Alexie Gilmore) is a cocktease and indifferent to his needs (and possibly cheating on him, but definitely stringing him along), and his much more charismatic creative writing teacher coworker, Mike (Henry Simmons), has been published in the New Yorker on his first attempt. On top of all that, his son Kyle (Daryl Sabara) is an unlikeable, perverted douchebag and treats Lance like shit for no reason (although I guess "being a teenager" is reason enough), and has a total of one friend, Andrew (Evan Martin). Attempts to bond with his son fail, but he just keeps on trying, and Lance keeps up with the insufferable way Claire treats him due to genuine feeling for her. However, through a freak accident, Lance loses his son, and in order to cover up the cause (it's...well, it's masturbation related), Lance concocts an elaborate lie that exposes the "real" Kyle. As a result, everyone in the school relates to (and, ultimately, horrendously dishonors) Kyle. Lance rides this new-found exposure and publicity, making his son much more likable than he ever was in real life, but at grave costs of his own.
Again, this is a pitch-black film, and Williams sells it. He is a veritable revelation here, as I couldn't imagine him acting in such a subdued, sedate way (or "acting" at all! It's amazing!) He is absolutely believable as the man who has given up on being any success in his life, and he wears that sense of lost potential so well, leaving it etched in every line of his face. The scene when he discovers Kyle in his room is heartbreaking, and his attempts to clean up after his son, and the revelation that his son really was a perverted, unlikeable douchebag, points at so much disappointment it's incredible. His is the most solid acting job in the film (Kyle is played as too actively an asshole; Claire's motivations behind some of her expressions are a bit unclear---especially during the dinner scene between her and Kyle and Lance; and most of the actors playing the schoolmates come across as either flat archetypes, or as very obviously acting---especially whoever played the goth girl). However, that being said, I was still engaged in the film, completely engrossed and eager to find out just how shady a person Lance could become, and just how far he could take his lie. A film this bleak and heartless is so contradictorily refreshing that it's incredible.
Throughout this film, it was easy for me to visualize any person in real life playing off an unspeakable tragedy as this. This scenario seems to be the very thing that reality television is based on: success from someone else's tragedy. The fact that it's Lance feeding off the death of his own son makes it that much worse, but hardly that less unlikely. Bobcat's script explores the loss of creativity, family, love, and success, while being about a collective obsession with tragedy (which is itself it's own brand of tragedy). What would anyone do to be successful? And how does one measure that success?
I have an incredible amount of respect for Bobcat Goldthwait now (again, this is his first writing/directing gig), and I hope he follows this up with something equally gut-punching. Kudos to Richard Kelly for producing this as well. And God bless Robin Williams; I have a new-found respect for him. This is to him what A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints is to Shia LaBeouf: no matter what they get involved with in the future, I can never hate them simply because they've made these films. That being said, Williams needs to keep his clothes on in his next film. Like...totally on.

EDIT 4/17/11: this is NOT Bobcat's first directorial effort. Merely the first one I've seen. I guess 5 minutes on IMDB would have alleviated that, but what are you going to do?