God Bless America is the latest entry from Bobcat Goldthwait, the stand-up comedian turned movie showman whose last film, World’s Greatest Dad, was a surprisingly hilarious and often indicting tale about how death has the tendency to turn even the vilest of human beings into icons of good-nature, cheer, and righteousness.
Before the review, a thought on Bobcat: the man is dark. I mean really dark. His movies are usually satires filled with black humor attempting to say something about the status quo. In World’s Greatest Dad, for example, Robin Williams plays father to a teenage kid who dies through autoerotic asphyxiation. The movie follows Williams’ character as he becomes a cause célèbre through his writings, which he masquerades as his dead son’s.
God Bless America is just as controversial. The movie opens with a voiceover by the main character, Frank Murdock (played by Joel Murray, Bill’s younger brother). As he lies in bed, pained by a constant migraine, his attempts to sleep are constantly interrupted either by the incessant crying from the neighbors’ baby, or the neighbors themselves. This gives way to the film’s opening fantasy: Frank wielding a shotgun and blowing the baby to smithereens. Yeah, it’s that kind of movie.
After Frank loses his job following a thoughtful act of sending flowers to his co-worker’s home address, he then learns from a doctor that he has an inoperable and terminal brain tumor. As he sinks into depression, he flips through the channels and sees what the state of culture in the West has become: shallow reality TV stars (think MTV’s My Sweet 16); singing competitions where the weak are mocked and exploited for ratings (akin to American Idol; X-Factor; The Voice); political commentators gone wild (in the image of Glenn Beck); and zealot church groups (none other than Westboro Baptist Church).
In essence, Frank is at the end of his rope. He lost his job. He’s going to die. His daughter doesn’t want to visit him, and his ex-wife seems to encourage their daughter’s selfish worldview. (In one early-scene, Frank’s daughter cries over getting a Blackberry and not what she asked for: an iPhone. She’s six.) So, he decides to kill people. Not just any people, though. Mean people, shallow people, people who picket military funerals, reality TV stars who throw used tampons at other people all for the sake of “exposure” and “being edgy,” pedophiles, and some would say the worst offenders: talkers at the Cineplex during the feature film. Ooh, my blood boils.
On his quest to kill, Frank meets up with Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr) who witnessed his first murder (Roxy’s classmate, who was the star of one such reality show) and convinces Frank to keep the spree going. While she, sixteen mind you, wants the relationship to take a femme fatale-turn, Frank keeps it strictly platonic. After all, you can’t become the thing you’re wont to loathe.
The movie is a combination of a road trip, Thelma and Louise, and the veiled ranting of a counter-cultural curmudgeon. In essence, God Bless America is Bobcat Goldthwait’s perception of the world and a road-map for what he fantasizes he could do. In many ways, it’s what Idiocracy would have been had Quentin Tarantino done a rewrite for Mike Judge. And, that’s the thing: God Bless America is at times hilarious and, scary enough, dead-on with its points. America has become a decaying culture where we prop up wasteful do-nothings with no talent whose only lot in life is to either be famous and/or on television. Hollywood is filled with them, and Frank’s soliloquies are not that far off the mark.
The problem, though, is that the movie becomes far too preachy. While Frank started out with a noble, albeit illegal, intent, it’s when he gets saddled up with Roxy that things start to derail. For starters, Roxy is annoying. Like, unbelievably so. She’s a psychopath whose motivation we don’t really understand. Frank’s motivation is obvious, and while we can begrudge him his desire to kill, we’re not really far behind him in his reasoning. He just wants, as he says, a civilization to be filled with civilized people. But, Roxy sees red with everyone. In irony, and I believe Goldthwait wasn’t aware this is what he was doing when he was writing her character and dialogue, Roxy actually names “Diablo Cody” as a person they should kill for writing Juno. I say ironic because Roxy could have been a character in the Juno-universe: what sixteen year old loves Alice Cooper? Actually, what sixteen year old even knows who Alice Cooper is?
While I’m a huge Bobcat Goldthwait fan, I simply could not get behind this movie. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy some scenes (the scene where Frank commits his first murder, clumsily, stands out); however, this is a movie where the whole is definitely less than its individual parts. One additional silver lining, though, is the acting of Joel Murray. I didn’t know Bill had another brother who was an actor, but he’s not shabby and I wouldn’t mind at all if he got more mainstream roles.
Nevertheless, I can’t fully recommend this movie. But, since I’m a fan of Bobcat’s, and if you’re truly in a black comedy mood, go with World’s Greatest Dad instead.
