OK film fans, as you might have detected from my posts, I am not the biggest fan of Hollywood stories and especially of Hollywood endings. And tonight's little gem is shining example of how much fun indie films can be when in the right hands.
Worlds Greatest Dad is among those wraith-like films that flicker into existence and disappear before most of us even know it was here. Thank goodness for Netflix! Written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, the auteur behind Stay and Shakes the Clown, is a film with merciless acuity that ridicules collective grief and the news media’s cynical marketing of inspiration and canonization after a death. This nihilistic comedy ultimately scorns the human impulse to find a deeper meaning in any tragedy, especially when none is forthcoming.
Lance Clayton (Robin Williams), a divorced failed novelist and poetry teacher in his son’s high school, struggles to put up with Kyle (Daryl Sabara in a surprisingly good performance from the new actor) and his anti-social behavior. Kyle is a pudgy, foulmouthed, not-so-bright loser, obsessed with masturbation. Kyle has only one friend, Andrew, a quiet kid just trying to get some time away from his alcoholic mother. Lance comes home after a date with his sometime girlfriend Clarie (Alexie Gilmore), the school’s art teacher, who has recently shown signs of interest in Mike, the newly published English teacher, to discover his son dead from auto-erotic asphyxiation in front of his computer.
Lance makes a quick decision to alter the appearances of the scene and make it look like suicide, complete with an introspective, emotional suicide note. Despite the slow start, it's at this point the film begins to shine. Based on the circulation of the suicide note, at the behest of the schools' newly appointed grief counselor, Kyle becomes venerated in the school. Once he discovers news of the note helping students come forward with their issues Lance fakes Kyle's journal for distribution to the school. Soon he is on a regional Oprah-esque TV show, publishers are courting him, his girlfriend refocuses her affections towards him and the school principal informs him the library is to be re-dedicated in his posthumous honor.
This is by no means a masterpiece. It's visually comparable to most amateur films and filled with one-dimensional caricatures. Still, the film knows what it wants to say and like a good film should, it shows you rather than tells you. But to be honest, without its brazen ending I wouldn't be writing about this film. Now I won't give away the ending, but as I said at the top, it's definitely not Hollywood and it's a hell of a lot more fun than the trite ending a studio would have tacked on. Even better is the not-so-thinly veiled message that the things you want most may not be the things that make you happy and that being lonely is not necessarily the same as being alone.
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