Robin Williams: What He Meant To Us

By now, you probably feel like you have seen it all. Since Robin Williams died on August 11th, thousands, if not millions of tributes have spread across the airways, the web, and everywhere in between. Heck, my Cinema Freaks colleague Lawrence Griffin already posted one here on this site (I encourage you to read it here if you have not already). So the question is, why do I bother? Why should a guy like me, who has seen only a fair portion of the man's full body of work, and is already far behind schedule on his other projects for the site (despite being in supposed semi-retirement) bother writing a post that has probably already been repeated too many times over the past week? Then again, why are any of us bothering when most of us did not even know him personally? What is it about Robin Williams and his untimely passing that has so affected us? I do not claim to completely know the answer, but if you are willing to indulge, I have some thoughts to share:

Of course, one part of it is the initial sock value of his death. Whenever someone even vaguely familiar to you departs this world, for whatever reason, there is this feeling of a void that can never quite be refilled. Few things, if any, are more permanent than death. When it comes in the way that it did for Williams - committing suicide at the relatively young age of 63 - the effect is multiplied tremendously. Still, many people sadly do this to themselves everyday - it has even been noted that Williams, as a middle-aged white male, was in a demographic known for committing suicide at high rates. Why does he get special attention?

One obvious answer is that Williams was famous. And not just somewhat famous - I mean iconic. He worked his way from stand-up to TV shows in the late 1970s (eventually landing his own series, "Mork and Mindy") before then going on to movies. And he never left. It has been pointed out that everyone has a different perception of Williams based on their generation. Baby Boomers and Gen Xers knew him from his stand-up, "Mork" and a handful of movies he did in the 1980s, while Millennials knew him for family-oriented movies he did in the 1990s and 2000s, like "Hook," "Jumanji," "Mrs. Doubtfire," "Aladdin" and the "Night at the Museum" films. Some of his more dramatic roles in things like "Good Will Hunting," "The Fisher King" and "One Hour Photo" have also managed to bridge the generation gap. Some spots of his career where brighter than others and not everything he did was golden, but I do not honestly remember a time where people asked "Whatever happened to that Robin Williams guy?" That is because while some celebrities have their moment in the sun and then fade off into the sunset (i.e. join a reality TV show) it seemed like Williams was always up to something. Even at the time of his death, he had completed scenes for four movies that have yet to be released. No matter what, he was always there.

This leads to a follow-up question: why was Williams so famous for so long? His great range certainly helped. He will ultimately be known as a brilliant comedian. I regrettably have not seen any of his stand-up routines all the way through, but even from just seeing him in interviews, you are able to get a glance at this talent: his superhuman abilities to come up with jokes and imitations on the fly and with machine-gun delivery. The fact that he could do all this and make it the majority of it funny is even more of an accomplishment. But in addition, he was also able to actually act. It is very difficult for comedians to break into dramas, as well as for dramatic actors to break into comedies. At least later on in his career, Williams would decide to do either and no one would bat an eye; they knew that whatever goofiness he may display off-screen can immediately give way to sadness or even grittiness once the cameras rolled. I think he was able to pull off this transition because even in his comedies, he knew when to stop and savor the serious moments. I admit to being annoyed by this when I was a kid: "Why is he so sad? This is suppose to be a happy movie!" But as I have gotten older, I have come to appreciate this more; life is not all together happy or sad, and it was great to have someone like Williams to show us both sides of the coin (in fact, my personal favorite movie of his is "Good Morning, Vietnam, " which I think does the best balancing act in this regard).

Life imitates art, and vice versa, and that seemed to be the case for Williams. Behind the cheerful demeanor was a man who dealt with alcohol and drug problems, was divorced twice, and suffered a longtime battle with depression. But as people have pointed out, he never let any of that define him the way it did with other celebrities. He would acknowledge it, joke about it, and then move on to something else. A great example of this took place less than a year ago, when he made what would be his last appearance on The Daily Show. He talked about how he started drinking again in 2006 after being sober for 20 years, while making one joke after another. That says a lot about someone who is able to make light of something that surely must have been a great personal tragedy. It may have worked too well - there is no indication that this was a man who would be dead a year from now. It just seemed like the same old Robin Williams that we have all knew and loved.

And that was the thing about Williams: no matter what, he always seemed to stay the same. Yes, he physically aged and he played different characters as his career progressed, but he never seemed to lose that child-like zeal, that burst of energy that would electrify the room wherever he went. On top of that, he remained a good guy. As I said, I did not know Williams personally, but I have yet to find someone who has said that he was a jerk or full of himself. The time and money he spent helping kids with cancer, entertaining troops overseas, or simply making Superman laugh again, seem to illustrate this point. There are many comedians, and celebrities in general, who have made a career out of playing jackasses. Williams would push people's buttons and lightly mock them, but he was rarely, if ever, mean about it. He only wanted to have a little fun, just like everybody else.

This last part might be the key to why we have felt so bad about William's death. Everything else I have mentioned before is valid, but one part seems to stand out the most: he was nice guy who would be fun to hang out with. No matter how miserable he might have been in real life, he never came off as removed or cold; if he did, it was because he was playing a character that felt lonely and desired a human connection. He certainly felt that way at times, but so do we all do at some point or another. More often than not, he was someone who wanted to be your friend, make you laugh, and have you feel good about yourself at the end of the day. So when we learn that someone like this was himself so unhappy that he chose to end it all, it just does not feel right. We think that he would be immune to something like this, that he can have stumbles in life but will always bounce back in the end. Life often does not have a Hollywood ending, yet no matter how many times we say tell ourselves this, we tend not to believe it. Williams proved otherwise, and it is not only sad, but almost heartbreaking.

So where does that leave us? Is there anything positive to get from this glum outlook? There is, and it is rather cliched but nonetheless true: our lives are better because of Robin Williams. He gave the world his unique talent and kindness, and inspired a number of people to follow in his footsteps. As sad as his death is, it does not take away from the great legacy he left behind. That message goes for both his close friends and family who really knew him, and those who just write a blog post about him to simply say "Thank you."

The pictures and links in this post do not belong to me and are not being used for monetary gain.

Robin Williams: The muse or the madness? A tribute

This is my unfiltered, unedited thoughts about Robin Williams’ death and other related issues.

Let me just get this straight; I was never a devout follower of Williams’. I never saw all of his comedy and I wasn’t familiar with a few of his famous films or his improv work. It was because of this that I was surprised by exactly how affected I was upon hearing of Robin Williams’ suicide earlier this week.

Yes, it was quite a blow...I mean, the man was the voice of several films of my childhood; most notably Jumanji and Aladdin. As I grew up, I appreciated him in other things - the heavyhanded drama of Dead Poets’ Society, the uplifting Good Will Hunting, the dark and eerie One Hour Photo, the bright and jubilant Good Morning Vietnam, the dramatic Awakenings, the cynical World’s Greatest Dad...there was just a LOT of shit the guy did that was SO good. It struck me because I just hadn’t realized exactly how much, as a fan and consumer of film and comedy, Robin Williams had affected my view of both of those things.

I’m not going to spend too much time dwelling on his work, as many people have already done so who were more imbued with passion for it than I was when he was alive. While I love the stuff I have seen, I really want to talk about something I mentioned back when Philip Seymour Hoffman died last February. In my tribute to him, I wrote this:

“In a way it’s the curse of great artists though – can we ever have someone who could dive so fully into a role that isn’t self destructive? It seems to me that self destructiveness goes hand-in-hand with the kind of immersive, chameleonic acting talent Hoffman had. It was like he was trying to lose himself in his roles, trying to escape whatever demons drove him to drugs in the first place.”

It’s the same thing with Williams, though a bit of a different angle. We know now that Robin Williams was suffering from depression and had been for some time. He had drug problems in the past too. And yet he was a comedic genius; he knew exactly what made comedy work and was quick to make jokes and get a crowd laughing in a variety of ways. He was a fucking funny guy and he went after his passion and his art with a tenacity that most people would kill to have.

And yet he was so, so immensely troubled that he hanged himself this week. I just now read, before starting this piece, that he apparently tried to cut his wrist as well with a knife. I don’t need to point out that these are not the actions of a man of sound mind.

Genius of any stripe comes at a price. Many people who do art, write, act in movies or plays, play music, etc, etc, etc - are just fucked up inside. Whether it’s from a bad childhood, a wrong decision made in childhood turning to drugs or just that general emptiness inside, they aren’t perfectly balanced … something is off in them. Like a wire loose. There have been various studies and reports that justify that, and it makes sense. You get real deep into writing a book or making a movie or anything like that. Your brain goes to places most peoples’ don’t. If you’re really possessed with the kind of manic creativity that leads you to just keep doing it and doing it and doing it, it isn’t just a facet of your life you can turn on and off - it’s something that seizes hold of you and won’t ever let go.

And it does seem like there IS just such a price for that genius...people get depressed and they sink into that like a trench, like a black bog from which there’s no return. And they don’t tell anybody because they’re human and there are a thousand reasons why they wouldn’t - or maybe people just don’t notice. Suicide is tough and complicated and it’s not always a clear sign that you’ll see right away. It’s not really a strong thing to do or a weak thing to do. It just is - it’s a fact of life inevitable that some people just can’t go on anymore and they make their own choice. It’s not something to judge.

People can certainly create and be mentally alright and live full lives. Not everyone who makes great art kills themselves or lives a life full of nothing but misery. But I do think there’s a truth to saying that those with really unbridled, brilliant creativity do end up paying a price for it in their own ways. It’s like the chicken-and-egg question - which comes first; the creativity or the mental instability? The muse or the madness? They feed off one another really. You have a big wide crevasse in you and it can only be filled for a little while by making art and telling stories and telling jokes and singing - and that isn’t a catch-all cure and it doesn’t last that long, and you can’t beat it forever because to create great art, there’s always some part of you that’s coming unhinged. Art isn’t made by studied, focus-group-tested and balanced methods of creations...it’s made by a soul willing to reach into the abyss. And many of those souls are broken, lost and living on the edge even when they have millions of dollars.

I don’t know Robin Williams’ situation, but the whole thing made me think a lot about these issues in a broad sense and I think they deserve to be talked about. I’m not romanticizing mental illness nor am I suggesting that we tolerate it for the sake of art - I’m just saying it’s a thing that needs to be talked about.

As for Williams...R.I.P., you strange, crazy, hilarious man. We’ll miss you.

Review: Old Dogs (2009)

Director: Walt Becker

Starring: John Travolta, Robin Williams

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0976238/

You know, with movies like this, I don’t even think there’s much human input at all. It’s just like a machine spitting out cliché plotlines, shallow characters and unfunny lines into a mishmash of blandness. And by god is this bland – I mean, you have no idea. It’s so bland it hurts. Watching this was like having to listen to a dentist drill in your ear for an hour and a half, and actually I’m tempted to say that would be preferable to watching Old Dogs again.

Yes, starring John Travolta and Robin Williams, because…I got nothing; they just picked these two big Hollywood comedic actors’ names out of a hat…Old Dogs was a commercial and critical flop, and for good reason, because this movie just sucks ass! And that’s good enough reason for me to take a look at it and put a nail in this kind of half-assed toothless comedic farce once and for all. Let us commence the beating.

It starts off with Travolta and Williams – I’m sure they have other names but I’m just going to call them by their real ones – walking down the street and arguing about what’s going to happen in their latest business venture, which is as vague and generic as any half-assed comedy ever put out. And what are their characters like? Well, what kinds of characters do they usually play? Travolta as a womanizing and suave nice guy with a voice so girly that most women talk to him because they think he’s a woman himself? Williams as a bumbling fool with a heart of gold and a temper like a volcano? Check aaaaaand check! And yes, I have my revolver on standby for this.

So after Williams begs Travolta not to tell an embarrassing story about him to the board of directors at the meeting later, like a true friend, Travolta goes ahead and tells exactly that story. What a douche. The direction here takes on a very annoying ‘snapshot’ style where short, quick scenes are shoved in your face like clumsily made religious pamphlets from a street leper as Travolta’s voice over tells the story. This is the kind of lazy crap that a lot of modern ‘comedies’ fall into. They seem to think that instead of telling a real story, they can just throw in a bunch of hastily made two-second scenes with shitty music playing over it and hope people laugh. Well I’m not laughing, movie!

Oh, right. So apparently after his first divorce, Williams was depressed and Travolta took him on a tropical vacation where he got a tattoo misspelled by an idiot tattoo artist and then married some chick he didn’t know just because she looked hot, only to leave her the next day out of shame. It’s the kind of boring crap that these kinds of movies substitute for real comedy because they think people can relate to it, or something like that. Because having any real comedy with out-there scenarios and jokes that actually call attention to themselves is just immature!

The next day, Williams gets a message from that chick he married when he was drunk, and she wants to meet him in person to talk. Travolta forces Williams to go to a tanning salon because the movie needs to set up the first of its many hilarious hijinks. Oh, what’s it going to be, movie? Maybe things are looking up after all. What’s that? The salon lady looks at his tattoo funny and then proceeds to flirt with Travolta while Williams gets a mega tan that makes him look like a Guido or something. Nope, that’s not funny at all. Pass.

At the airport, Williams gets stopped by like three people in a row who think he’s Hispanic because of the heavy tan, because…I guess that’s all they’ve got. They can’t even make any real jokes, so they’re just throwing in bland misunderstandings and hoping they get a chuckle or two. It’s like a high schooler who spent his whole night on the Internet looking up porn instead of doing the big project that’s due the next day, and so he had to throw something crappy together at the last minute, appeasing the teacher’s mercy with the barest of his wit. That’s this whole movie. A shoveled together, last minute attempt at humor from a writer who spent his evenings getting drunk because this was the only work he was getting. And who can blame him?

Ugh. So Williams meets with the chick he married when he was drunk, and they exchange several bouts of creepily awkward laughter, because THAT shows us that these two characters haven’t seen each other in a while, right? They go to a restaurant when she drops two bombshells on him one after the other: she’s going to jail for chaining herself to a bulldozer and protesting the destruction of her home (….okay…), AND she has kids. Williams’ kids. Yup, he’s a father. A father who has to impress business executives in order to get a big stake in the company and has to take care of his kids as well. Can you feel the quirkiness yet? Because it’s coming. It’s coming in absurdly small amounts so as to not alienate any of the viewers, because good comedy never takes any risks, right? It never has anything that could possibly offend anyone.

…oh, I forgot this scene, where Williams slams the trunk door on the kids’ original babysitter, ruining her hands:

Charming! I bet she’ll be depressed for weeks and never be able to use her hands fully again for at least a year, but at least you got some laug…at least it was funn…oh, wait, I can’t think of any positives. Scratch that.

So now Williams and Travolta have to take care of two kids. It’s like Two and a Half Men if it was robbed of all good taste and any kind of jokes. For some weird ass reason the film starts to make jokes about how old Travolta and Williams are, with almost every other line having something to do with the two of them being grandpa age. Uh, are we missing something? These guys are old enough to be grandpas? I don’t know; I mean sure they’re not young men anymore, but grandpas? Hardly.

There’s one scene where Williams gets kicked out of his expensive condominium for bringing kids in – and trying to disguise them with hats and sunglasses, because that usually works. The alarm goes off and the lights turn on like there’s a burglar in the house, and the woman Williams talks to runs screaming like she’s being attacked. Ha. Haha…oh, wait, it wasn’t funny.

Then they move in with Travolta, who has poison-tipped spears in glass cases, a fifteen feet deep pool and other things eccentric rich people normally have for no apparent reason other than to seem different and quirky. Williams hires two morons to ‘baby-proof’ the house, which in this movie means asking stupid questions (“You got these spears a thousand years ago? You expect me to believe that?”) and eating food out of the fridge, like total assholes who any sane person would throw out and have arrested in a second, but the movie needs to have more things to kick around its two punching bags of main characters. The kids want to go camping, and scream so loud that they make the birds fly away, and so that’s what they do next! Camping.

This is the point where the movie really slides off a cliff and becomes flat out intolerable as opposed to just silly and clichéd. I’m going to try and sum up what happens in the next half hour of the movie without killing myself or setting out on a quest to murder everyone involved in this. Take a deep breath, people. This is gonna get ugly real fast.

So they go to camp, where this one weirdo thinks Travolta stole his girlfriend. The two guys get mistaken for a gay couple, and then they’re forced to participate in a game of ultimate Frisbee, where Williams hurts that weird guy and busts his lip. They get tackled and shoved around a lot and probably violently hurt, and then Williams blows the head off this statue of the camp’s founder. Then somehow he sets the whole thing on fire? I don’t know. They go back to the house and talk about taking pills like old men, except AGAIN they’re really not that old, so I don’t get why the movie keeps pretending they are. Does the movie assume we can’t tell the difference between the middle-aged Williams and Travolta and actual old people above the age of 65 or so? That’s really stupid, movie.

The kids knock over all the pills while Travolta and Williams aren’t looking, and thus more annoying garbage ensues as the two hapless bland personas suffer all the worst, most cartoony side effects of the pills when they’re trying to do important things, like hit on women at grief circles, and play golf games with Japanese men and Seth Green:

Ghastly. Can’t this movie even try to conjure up something watchable? Just once?

For that matter, yeah, this woman who Travolta was hitting on invited him to come to a grief circle where everyone just grieves about people, I guess. That’s all fine and well but…WHY would she invite some random guy who was hitting on her to a grief circle? Oh yeah, that’s real top notch dating material there! Is she going to have the honeymoon at a funeral parlor? Maybe first conception in the middle of a graveyard? It’s all just happiness and butterflies for this woman, isn’t it?

So because Robin Williams feels that he isn’t connecting with his kids enough, Travolta gives him some sound advice: Just be there for them, protect them and do what they want to do. So how do they go about that? Get this. Travolta takes Williams to a guy played by Bernie Mac who has developed a highly experimental ‘human puppet’ system where two people wear suits, with one moving his body and the other one being manually controlled to do whatever the first guy is doing. Because of this, Travolta and Bernie Mac are able to sit upstairs and control Williams’ movements as he has a pretend tea-party with his daughter.

Is it weird that the only thing going through my head during this was, "where did they get those costumes?"

Uh…okay. This is too much. THIS is their idea of how to foster better bonding between a father and his kids?! You can’t be serious! You really can’t be serious! That’s ludicrous. It doesn’t even matter how much you try to cover it up with sappy, poorly done emotional scenes afterward; normal human beings would never consider something like this as an alternative. Movie, shoot yourself. Repeatedly!

GOD! The rest of the film goes like this: Williams’ wife gets out of jail, and comes home, but Williams and Travolta have to go to Japan to seal the big business deal. They blow it because Williams is homesick for his family, and then the two of them and Seth Green have to invade a zoo to crash the birthday party and be there like they promised. Williams bribes a stuntman to borrow his costume and go to his kids, while Seth Green is kidnapped by a gorilla. It all ends happily ever after with this:

AAAAAAAHHHHH! That's the scariest thing I've ever seen.

Fuck this movie. It’s unfunny, it’s annoying, it’s clichéd and there’s simply nothing good about it, barely any scenes that aren’t completely horrible. Be ashamed if you ever spend money on corporate shitstockings as putrid as this. It is quite simply, unwatchable. And that’s no lie. 

Review: Jack (1996)

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Starring: Robin Williams, Bill Cosby, Jennifer Lopez, Diane Lane, Adam Zolotin

IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116669/

"What do I want to be when I grow up? Alive."

-Jack Powell

This movie was marketed entirely wrong. See that colorful movie cover up there? See how colorful and goofy it looks? Well, that’s not this movie at all. I’m totally serious; I went in expecting a really silly, banal comedy and came out actually thinking about my life and feeling pretty depressed and soulful. Would you expect that from looking at the cover for this movie? No? Well that proves it, movie executives; you guys need better marketing campaigns for your movies.

Even more perplexing is that it’s made by Francis Ford Coppola, director of the Godfather movies and Dracula, which I’ll be reviewing in a couple of days. This is not the kind of movie anyone expected him to make, but it’s a personal one, as he lost his own young son at an early age. Upon reading about that…well, it all clicked into place for this movie.

So, Jack…it’s about Robin Williams as a young boy who has a tragic disease that speeds up his cell aging by about 4 times the normal rate, making him appear 4 times older than he really is. As you can imagine, this is a cause for the parents to be pretty overprotective – so much so that they went all the way to Bill Cosby as a tutor. That’s some real parental love right there! But soon enough he wants to go to a public school and be with kids his own age. And they let him. And hijinks ensue – but surprisingly, they’re…not all THAT stupid and not all THAT annoying to watch. It’s played straight.

I’m as surprised as you are. A movie that had Robin Williams being directed to act like a 10 year old is actually doing a reasonable and mature job of handling the subject. My jaw was on the floor. I was expecting to hate this movie! I looked at the summary, looked at the cover and went, that can’t possibly be good. Did I just…randomly go into a parallel universe where terrible, heinous ideas turn into good movies? Did I get hit on the head? Whatever the case, I’m not complaining.

Jack sets things up pretty well, all things considered. The acting is really top notch, with Diane Lane as the mother giving a believable performance and all of the child actors doing very well. Williams is the central focus, of course, as he stumbles his way through life with a wide-eyed curiosity and a very authentic ten-year-old boy way of talking and walking. The scenes on the playground where the kids interact with him are all really great, as they slowly learn to accept him as he is – maybe it’s a little too quick, considering how mean little kids can actually get, but hey, it’s only a 2 hour movie. And the whole sequence starting with his asking out his teacher (Jennifer Lopez) to the school dance, leading up to his heart contraction, is just mesmerizing.

His parents don’t want him to go back to school due to his illness getting worse with age. This is one of the film’s most memorable motifs. His spirit slowly breaks and he becomes depressed, losing his will to do anything but sit around and be safe. His mom just tries to be the best parent she can be, but it’s clear as day to the viewer that she’s making the wrong choice on this – Williams doesn’t need to be pampered and preserved; he’s not going to live that long anyway. He needs to go out like he does in the rest of the movie and just live. His speech at his graduation ceremony is schmaltzy, but it’s really touching, too. Very well done.

There are a couple really stupid things about this movie, though…mostly centering around Louie’s mother, recently widowed and always searching for a new man. If the laws of implausibility and wrongheaded comedy ever had a gold-mine, this is it, as she actually flirts with him and tries to get him to go out to dinner with her. Later on at a club they meet again and they dance, with him actually grabbing her ass…well, uh, okay. This plot point is just creepy, really, and doesn’t add much to the movie besides something to take away from the genuine emotive power of the rest of it. Yay for pedophilia? Seriously, it actually borders on disturbing. And just imagine what would have happened if some passerby had discovered them all in the clubhouse – what would it look like? A grown man sitting around with kids in a clubhouse looking at nude magazines?

But I realized that that is not the correct way to approach this movie – in fact, it’s exactly the opposite of what the movie wants to get across. Jack is a movie about childhood and the short time we sometimes have on this Earth, and its moral is that we need to let go and just live every second like it’s our last. I liked it for its bare honesty and earnest disposition. It was a nice little trip through the eyes of a very unique child. The acting is great, the story is pretty interesting and the themes are worldly and relevant to anyone. Jack is a good movie. Go see it.

Review: World's Greatest Dad (2009)

Director: Bobcat Goldthwait

Starring: Robin Williams, Daryl Sabara, Alexie Gilmore

Website: http://www.worldsgreatestdadfilm.com/

"You didn't like Kyle. I didn't either. I loved him. He was my son. He was also a douchebag."
-Lance Clayton

If your jackass of a son died in an accident while masturbating, what would you do? Because apparently Robin Williams' answer in this movie is to forge a suicide note for him to cover up the embarrassing fact of his actual death. He makes it look like a hanging, and the note he writes turns his formerly hated and outcasted son into a martyr who everyone now worships like a demigod. It also rejuvenates his writing career and makes him famous - even though nobody knows that he wrote the journal that he claims his son wrote. Whatever works for him, I guess.

This movie spends its first half building up the relationship between Lance and his son, played by former Spy Kid Daryl Sabara. The movie really pulls no punches with this character; he is a complete ingrate in every way. He looks at scat porn in his free time, makes lewd comments to the girls at school and has no respect for his father at all. He is made out to be a thoroughly unlikable character and he pretty much is. But when he dies and the fake suicide note that Lance writes is published in the school newspaper, everyone changes their tone. It is quite a scathing commentary on the hypocrisy of high school students. People who were seen bullying him before are now praising him. Even though nobody in this movie gave him a second thought when he was alive, when he's dead, they're all his friends. Typical - and quite despicable, too.

But of course the humorous twist is that he really wasn't some kind of martyr at all, and he really just died while masturbating. It happens in real life with kids who actually were as brilliant, depressive and introspective as Lance makes his son out to be through fake memoirs, but in this movie it's subverted by just throwing all that out entirely. There is - or was - no trace of introspection, intelligence or artistry in this dead boy at all. He was a perverted, degenerate shmuck. The kids, and by extension the whole world, is worshiping nothing more than Lance's own work, as for the first time he has gained fame from something he wrote. It is absolutely hilarious in its morbidity and surreality. Hard to watch at times, sure, but hilarious nonetheless.

It does raise some questions, though, like, why did Lance do what he did? That's the hidden genius of this picture, even beyond the dark satire elements. It's left ambiguous. Did he fake a suicide note for his son to honor the family name? Out of love for his son, not wanting him to be looked upon negatively - or more negatively - in death? Was it an act of mad delusion, out of sheer disbelief that anything so sudden could happen to him at all? It's never directly said. It does clash with the satirical side, though, as does the ending, in which he confesses what he did to the school as they are about to re-name the library in Kyle's honor. His burden has been lifted. But what effect does it have on the satire? It seems conflicting. More fitting for a dramatic film than a black comedy, really.

World's Greatest Dad is not without its flaws, but it is a clever movie, and one that merits watching for anyone who won't be bothered by the excess language and crass mannerisms that crust this strange little pie. For some reason a lot of people can't look past all of that to see what a good movie this is. Their loss, I think. Recommended if you liked Punch Drunk Love, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and other similar black comedies. Funny, insightful and sharp as a razor's edge.