Movie Review: Robin Williams Stars in the Dark Comedy World's Greatest Dad

"World's Greatest Dad", a new film by former stand up comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, has a premise with all the potential in the world. It's edgy, satirical, and we've never seen anything quite like it. Unfortunately, however, the brilliance seems to have ended in the early developmental stages. The script meanders around with lifeless one-note characters, the dialogue is a completely tone-deaf farce, the soundtrack is an obviously literate self-parody, and in an attempt to make both a drama and a comedy, Goldthwait fails at both. A noble failure, indeed, but a failure nonetheless.

Kyle Clayton (Daryl Sabara) is the son from hell. He's a chauvinist with interests that end at masturbation. His father, Lance (Robin Williams), tries his best to connect with his son, but his efforts are thwarted when Kyle announces that the only thing queerer than music are the people who like it.

Lance, a failed writer, makes a living as a poetry teacher at Kyle's high school. His on-again-off-again girlfriend, Clarie (Alexie Gilmore), is a tease much more interested in one of Lance's younger and more successful co-workers. One day, he walks into Kyle's room and finds that his son has died from autoerotic asphyxiation. Once Lance pulls himself together, he covers up Kyle's death by writing a suicide note and hanging him from the closet.

Kyle's classmates, who used to find him repulsive, now plaster the hallway walls with posters professing their love for their fallen classmate. When "Kyle's" suicide note is published in the school newspaper, both student and faculty find deep meaning in Kyle's death. Lance, who has never been able to get one of his novels published, now has a way of getting read - by writing his son's diary.

This idea, of the romanticization of the dead, is tackled well in a few brief instances, but most of the time it's ham-fisted and dull. Take, for instance, a scene where students read "Kyle's" words and fantasize about him - for example, the goth girl envisions a self-mutilating Kyle with eyeliner. Could we be beaten over the head any more?

Robin Williams' performance worked for me in the developing stages of the film, but as the film progressed I started to think that I mistook his understated performance for pure boredom. Daryl Sabara, from the "Spy Kids" movies, succeeds in being thoroughly despicable, but the dialogue he's been given is the sort of construct that only exists in movies like this one.

The film teeters between drama and comedy so often that I found myself laughing at the drama and cringing at the comedy. When Lance finds Kyle's body, sappy music is cued and we watch Lance cry in slow motion for a minute or so. Williams gives it all he has, but the shamelessly manipulative filmmaking hit my gag reflex more than my tear ducts.

Bobcat Goldthwait is not an awful storyteller, but I do think he underestimates the intelligence of the audience. Everything in the film is so obvious, so one-note, so literal - by the end of this "thinking piece", you realize that you didn't have to do any of the thinking for yourself.