Bobcat Goldthwait is Falling Down |
| Tara Lynne Barr and Joel Murray in GOD BLESS AMERICA, a Magnet Release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing. |
God Bless America does touch on at least some of the same ground as World's Greatest Dad, but it lacks the core of humanity, the discipline, and the skill of the latter. It is, to put it simply, a disappointment.
The film stars Joel Murray as Frank, a man that is frustrated by his life and embittered by the failings of American culture that he sees all around him. He's lost his wife, his kid is a brat, his neighbors are inconsiderate boors, and he loses his job when he sends a receptionist flowers and she reports him for harassment. Frank is something of a loser. But Frank doesn't see it that way - he sees the world around him as filled with uncivilized phonies, and he's the only one still keeping it real.
Cast against Frank's rage at the horrible people he sees and hears everywhere he goes, he learns that he's going to die of a brain tumor. Disconsolate, Frank sits on his couch and turns on the very TV shows that enrage him. He is soon appalled by the behavior of a spoiled teenager on one of those Sweet Sixteen reality shows (as any reasonable person should be - but that's the whole damn point of shows like that, to show people behaving badly to audiences both disapproving and titillated).
What's a man to do in this situation? Frank decides to murder the star of that Sweet Sixteen show and commit suicide. Only the murder is witnessed by Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr), a precocious teenager who is as unhappy and bitter about the world as Frank is. Roxy tracks Frank down and stops him from committing suicide. She convinces Frank to instead go on a murder spree, tracking down and killing a variety of unsavory jerks and celebrities.
The remainder of the film involves the pair murdering people, complaining about things of which they disapprove, and bonding over their rants and desire to leave America behind for France (because they believe the French hate Americans as much as they do - I hope they know the French have their own reality shows).
God Bless America is occasionally funny. Goldthwait has an eye for the absurd. The murderous duo also complain about so much that you're bound to find yourself nodding along in agreement with them at one point or another. Goldthwait is also on target in that celebrity culture, reality television, and a noxious talk radio approach to politics are pollutants ripe for satire. When Goldthwait sticks just to presenting these elements of society in their native habitat, only slightly exaggerating, it works decently, if not entirely originally.
We may even find ourselves occasionally rooting for Frank and Roxy to have an impact, even if it might be a little uncomfortable to root for people filled with so much expectation of privilege that they elevate their pet peeves into crimes against humanity.
Where the film fails is when Goldthwait turns the movie into a stand-up routine of rants about modern culture. Goldthwait has a lot of axes to grind, and he grinds every last one of them until they're too dull to do any cutting. At a certain point, I realized I was being subjected to an epic old fogey "kids these days" rant. This might seem problematic given that the old fogey character mouthing Goldthwait's words is hanging out with a teenage girl, but Goldthwait solves that problem by turning her into a Mary Sue.
Roxy hates kids these days, too. She prefers old television - the television Goldthwait likes, no doubt - she rejects over-dependence on impersonal technology, she doesn't like the way people dress these days, and she even rhapsodizes over, get this, Alice Cooper (who was at the height of his fame some two decades before she was born). Is there a romance budding between Frank and the pretty teenage girl who wants nothing more than to spend time with him and might as well be his every fantasy? Now, now. Goldthwait makes sure we know Frank doesn't want to fuck Roxy, although he suggests - of course - that she wouldn't mind some intimate time with Frank.
We might object that the terminally ill Frank is hardly the paragon of civilization and values he believes himself to be given that he's letting a naive teenage destroy her life as part of his own suicide mission. Presumably when he dies quickly, she can suffer for decades. Yet Roxy is such a perfect fantasy for Frank that it is too difficult to begrudge him for allowing her to tag along.
Roxy is a fantasy, just like everything about this movie. But this movie is a fantasy deeply personal to Goldthwait and one that will only be appreciated by people that happen to agree with everything he's saying. It's just too insistent on airing out every pet peeve and taking time out from the movie to deliver some stand-up about them.
It isn't entirely crazy to fantasize about taking out people that annoy us - and I suppose the film can provide some healthy venting and fantasy fulfillment for some. But there has to be something more than just ranting and killing, ranting and killing. Otherwise, the movie loses any claim to moral authority and becomes a tantrum more than a satire.
If you fantasize a lot about killing people that annoy you and then getting a few moments on national TV to delivery a creaky, on-the-nose lecture to the citizens about how awful they have become before massacring them all, I suppose you've found your movie (now find your therapist). If you don't see the imminent collapse of society in the consumption of energy drinks, however, then you probably aren't going to be as into Frank and Roxy's mission - or this movie - as Goldthwait is.
And when you think about it, what is Frank and Roxy's mission? They simply want to elevate their personal tastes into cultural diktats. Which is no less vulgar than any of the stuff Goldthwait is ranting about. We all get annoyed by things around us, and there certainly is a lot to criticize in modern culture. Rather than devolving into bitter old fogeys, however, a simpler fix might be to just turn off the TV.
Screened on Blu-ray DVD.
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