Review: 'World's Greatest Dad' Summer's Greatest Movie?

Some guys never seem to catch a break in life. Lance Clayton is one of them.

In “World’s Greatest Dad,” the recently-released, extremely dark and sometimes perverse new comedy from writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait (we know, we’re just as surprised as you), Clayton (Robin Williams) is the epitome of the put-upon, browbeaten modern middle-class American man. He’s a high-school poetry teacher with hardly any students, a girlfriend who’s afraid to be seen in public with him, and a son named Kyle (played with an amazing level of scorn by Daryl Sabara) who surely must rank as the foulest, most awful teenager in the history of movies.

Lance does have dreams of greatness, however. In fact, he’s in the middle of sending off his fifth novel for agent consideration, even though he’s never been published before. But ** SPOILER ALERT ** one night, after finding his son dead from a bout of autoerotic asphyxiation that occurred while watching porn on this computer, Lance suddenly feels a unique burst of inspiration: in order to cover up the shame of his son’s actual cause of death, he moves Kyle’s body, re-hangs him in his closet and writes the perfect suicide note so that the policeman who finds him will think that it was just another, normal teenage suicide.

But when the note is leaked to his high school newspaper, Kyle is quickly embraced as a misunderstood saint rather than the most misanthropic monster in the building. And with a newfound discovery of his writing’s potential for power, Lance quickly builds lie upon lie, creating an entire book of Kyle’s faux “journals” and watching his words take flight among all of Kyle’s newfound “fans.” ** END SPOILER **

With “Dad,” which caused a sensation last January at the Sundance Film Festival, Goldthwait accomplishes several remarkable feats. He manages to take a detestable subject, death by auto-erotic asphyxiation, and still deal with it in a way that won’t drive people from the theater.

He also pulls out a stunning performance from Williams that easily ranks among the Oscar-winner’s career best. Conveying everything from drudgery to wild-eyed glee with a dollop of perfectly placed tragedy in between, Williams shows that when he wants to apply himself, he’s still one of the most daring and unpredictable actors in the business.

Goldthwait manages not only to completely reinvent his image from its prior heyday as a B-grade, one-note comedic weirdo with a screechy voice and claim a spot as an astute observer of modern American life whose best qualities easily fit in the canon of the character-based classic comedies of the late, great writer-director Hal Ashby.

But most important of all, Goldthwait has created a film comedy that offers plenty of fodder for deeper consideration. For even as Lance Clayton manages to deify his son through the falsely glowing tribute of a suicide note, the movie quietly yet firmly points the finger at each and every audience member as well – asking them if they want to laugh or cry, believe or disbelieve in Kyle’s sudden appearance of saintliness.

While “World’s Greatest Dad” was shot last year in Seattle and debuted in January, its amazingly prescient script addresses a question that all of America should be asking in a summer overshadowed by the deaths of two controversial American icons, Michael Jackson and Teddy Kennedy: Just because someone with a vile or highly questionable past dies, does that suddenly mean we have to make them a saint?

Like any great film, “World’s Greatest Dad” doesn’t have all the answers, but at least it’s asking the right questions.