Bobcat Goldthwait is not regarded to a mainstream audience as a writer/director of dark comedies- if anything he's 'that crazy guy' from Police Academy movies or a noticeable presence in stand-up comedy- but then again a movie like World's Greatest Dad, almost in spite of the title, is not meant for a 'mainstream' audience, whatever that is. Perhaps, as a guess, that audience would prefer Old Dogs. In this film, Robin Williams plays Lance, who is a failed writer who teaches poetry to high schoolers who either suck at it or are just no good, has a hot-cold affair with another teacher, and his son, for lack of a better term, is a waste.
Kyle, as it turns out, just sits in his room and masturbates - a lot - and to whatever he can get his hands on, the sicker the better (he even takes a liking to the little old lady next door through the curtains), and he hates just about anything, and his peers hate him right back. But somehow his father doesn't, and this is key, especially when, midway through the movie, Kyle is found by his father dead (strangled by his own auto-erotic asphyxiation trip gone bad). His father doesn't want this shame put upon him or his son, so he does something both noble and sleazy: he makes up a fake suicide note and makes it look intentional, and then, when the letter is accidentally leaked out to the school paper Kyle becomes the new big deal. As happens to celebrities, Kyle is popular precisely because of the BS letter and, later written by Lance, a journal of his bad times, and Lance soaks it all up.
The movie has that similar edge of looking at high school life as a wicked satire like Heathers (the two even share a link with the theme of suicide being a "permanent solution" that affects people on some gut level), but Goldthwait has other ideas up his sleeve too. World's Greatest Dad asks how rotten we are deep down, or what someone's death reveals about people after the fact. One can see that Lance, like his son, was an outsider, but whereas Kyle was fine with it- actually, as the little s*** he was, kind of proud of it- Lance wanted fame and recognition, even going as far to say that doing the word was the part he liked the least. With this opportunity, however, he gets the attention he craved, but in the wake of a real tragedy that makes him numb to it from everybody else's abstract reaction to it. It's a scathing comment on human nature and, so to speak, the after-life first, and a high school satire second.
It also must be noted how good Williams is here. He's ventured into dark territory before but not in a while (One Hour Photo his best, Death to Smoochy most divisive), and he's able to make Lance a complicated and not sympathetic being. We're not meant to like him really, neither him or especially his son, but we do understand him as a sort of lost soul (that is, until the end with the big reveal and bizarre freedom-dive into the swimming pool). He can be subtle and introverted, but there are also those moments where he has to really go all out emotionally; my favorites were when he just breaks out laughing hysterically (one of which when he's on the talk-show, a mix of laugh and cry), and the other when he finds his sons body. Kudos should also go to the actor playing Kyle, who is perfectly skeezy and slimy, a quintessential loser-teen who actually earns his title.
World's Greatest Dad is morbid but not totally hopeless. Somehow Goldthwait does like his characters (or some of them) almost in spite of themselves, and one could see an interesting pair-up of this with Bad Santa. We can accept them or completely reject them, but it's hard to be indifferent to the characters in this movie, and that's something.
Kyle, as it turns out, just sits in his room and masturbates - a lot - and to whatever he can get his hands on, the sicker the better (he even takes a liking to the little old lady next door through the curtains), and he hates just about anything, and his peers hate him right back. But somehow his father doesn't, and this is key, especially when, midway through the movie, Kyle is found by his father dead (strangled by his own auto-erotic asphyxiation trip gone bad). His father doesn't want this shame put upon him or his son, so he does something both noble and sleazy: he makes up a fake suicide note and makes it look intentional, and then, when the letter is accidentally leaked out to the school paper Kyle becomes the new big deal. As happens to celebrities, Kyle is popular precisely because of the BS letter and, later written by Lance, a journal of his bad times, and Lance soaks it all up.
The movie has that similar edge of looking at high school life as a wicked satire like Heathers (the two even share a link with the theme of suicide being a "permanent solution" that affects people on some gut level), but Goldthwait has other ideas up his sleeve too. World's Greatest Dad asks how rotten we are deep down, or what someone's death reveals about people after the fact. One can see that Lance, like his son, was an outsider, but whereas Kyle was fine with it- actually, as the little s*** he was, kind of proud of it- Lance wanted fame and recognition, even going as far to say that doing the word was the part he liked the least. With this opportunity, however, he gets the attention he craved, but in the wake of a real tragedy that makes him numb to it from everybody else's abstract reaction to it. It's a scathing comment on human nature and, so to speak, the after-life first, and a high school satire second.
It also must be noted how good Williams is here. He's ventured into dark territory before but not in a while (One Hour Photo his best, Death to Smoochy most divisive), and he's able to make Lance a complicated and not sympathetic being. We're not meant to like him really, neither him or especially his son, but we do understand him as a sort of lost soul (that is, until the end with the big reveal and bizarre freedom-dive into the swimming pool). He can be subtle and introverted, but there are also those moments where he has to really go all out emotionally; my favorites were when he just breaks out laughing hysterically (one of which when he's on the talk-show, a mix of laugh and cry), and the other when he finds his sons body. Kudos should also go to the actor playing Kyle, who is perfectly skeezy and slimy, a quintessential loser-teen who actually earns his title.
World's Greatest Dad is morbid but not totally hopeless. Somehow Goldthwait does like his characters (or some of them) almost in spite of themselves, and one could see an interesting pair-up of this with Bad Santa. We can accept them or completely reject them, but it's hard to be indifferent to the characters in this movie, and that's something.