Day 42
Film 34
Directed by: Bobcat Goldthwait
Screenplay by: Bobcat Goldthwait
Starring: Robin Williams, Daryl Sabara, and Alexie Gilmore
World's Greatest Dad is a dark comedy. It is a startling look at how death can change people. This movie would have been unbearable without its sense of irony or sarcasm. Even with it it was far from an easy watch. World's Greatest Dad dragged by, with a first act that was more painful than funny, and more introduction than plot.
It picks up in the second act as we helplessly watch father and protagonist Lance Clayton (Williams) clean up after his son Kyle (Sabara,) who died accidentally due to asphyxiation while masturbating, and frames it as a suicide, writing a suicide note that was more poetry than truth. This note becomes a perfect storm inside the high school where Lance teaches. The rest is a tangled mess of painful sarcasm and the blackest of humor. We laugh because otherwise we would have to accept this horrible act.
Black humor is something that is very hard to do right, because it is a balancing act of making a world so twisted it looks like our own and then making it humorous enough to not make us want to kill our selves while watching it. It is also something that most people do not like. People do not like looking into the mirror and seeing what is actually there.
World's Greatest Dad is not a perfect film by a long stretch, half of it is downright painful to watch. There are some spectacular scenes, and the screenplay was a spectacular weave of irony but it too was just as brilliant as it was flawed.
World's Greatest Dad is not for the faint of heart, who want their movies to be a dream. It is a nightmare that you cannot turn away from, but more importantly one you want to see through to the end.
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