World’s Greatest Dad 2009 English Movie
Cast And Crew
Producer Richard Kelly, Sean McKittrick, Tedd Hamm, Tim Perell, Howard Gertler
Director Bob Goldthwait
Writer Bob Goldthwait
Music: Gerald Brunskill
Cast: Robin Williams, Alexie Gilmore, Daryl Sabara, Geoff Pierson, Henry Simmons, Mitzi McCall,
Studio: Big Fish Films
Running Time: 90 min.
Release Date: 21 Aug 2009
Genre: Comedy
Language:English
Plot Summary
Lance is a high school teacher who protects his family from shame following the embarrassing accidental death of his son. Lance writes a fake suicide note to cover up the death, but without permission the note is published and becomes an unexpected hit. Keen to be a successful author, Lance produces an entire journal which he passes off as his son’s.
Lance Clayton is a man who has learned to settle. He dreamed of being a rich and famous writer, but has only managed to make it as a high school poetry teacher. His only son Kyle is an insufferable jackass who won’t give his father the time of day. He is dating Claire, the school’s adorable art teacher, but she doesn’t want to get serious — or even acknowledge publicly that they are dating. Then, in the wake of a freak accident, Lance suffers the worst tragedy and greatest opportunity of his life. He is suddenly faced with the possibility of all the fame, fortune and popularity he ever dreamed of, if he can only live with the knowledge of how he got there.
Review
PARK CITY — Robin Williams leaps off a high dive in the nude at the end of “World’s Greatest Dad.” Not an inspiring sight. That’s an apt metaphor for what he has done professionally in this dunderheaded delirium from writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait.
It’s definitely the sophomore jinx for Goldthwait, whose previous Sundancer was the uproarious and audacious romantic comedy with bestiality “Sleeping Dogs Lie.” In this second coming, the protagonist’s son dies while masturbating, wonderfully apt for the creative Onanism on display here.
On the upside, there are intermittent hilarities, and if the film’s delegation, which attended this premiere, can descend on all public showings to serve as a raucous laugh track, “World’s Greatest Dad” should someday achieve cult status.
Williams unfortunately displays his incredible range here: He once played a poetry teacher (”Dead Poets Society”) and reached a pinnacle in his outstanding career, and now he has once again played a poetry teacher and notched the nadir of his career.
In “Dad,” Williams slumps along as an aspiring novelist, Lance, whose lifetime output has generated only rejection slips. Literary Lance toils as an unspired poetry teacher and a dottering single dad. He shares a tiny abode with his loathsome teenaged son, Kyle (Daryl Sabara), an obnoxious creep who annoys everyone. The kid’s only enthusiasm is German porn and masturbation. For recreation, Lance doesn’t do a lot; he slogs away in a clandestine affair with a colleague (Alexie Gilmore), a fickle ninny who won’t publicly date him.
Amid these humdrum happenings, Goldthwait interjects double entendres, profanity, comic cliches and other puerile witticisms. A few might have made it into a rough draft of a “Simpsons” episode before being discarded. The best thing is some really bad poetry by Lance’s dumbbell students.
Going limp with his gaggery, Goldthwait kills off the kid halfway through, a great relief to everyone. We’re glad he’s gone but, paging Dr. House, how exactly does a teenager die while masturbating in his desk chair? Incredibly, Lance turns his son’s death into a revival of his failed literary career, a modestly inspired dark irony in this otherwise dimwitted ditty.
Under Goldthwait’s heavy comic hand, technical contributions are pitched to the broadest reaches. Highest praise goes to cinematographer Horacio Marquinez, whose dim lighting manages to obscure many of “Dad’s” home scenes..
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