World's Greatest Dad

***Spoiler alert!!!***

I don’t cry very often. So it takes a lot to make me cry. The only reason I cried while watching The Notebook was because I was being forced to watch it. But something about Robin Williams being sad makes me well-up something fierce. World’s Greatest Dad, I didn’t have much hopes for. But it turned out to be great. I love me some Robin Williams. He’s a genius! But I don’t think I’ve seen him in enough dramatic roles. This movie displays his acting talent in a whole new light. Perhaps I’ve not watched enough dramatic Robin Williams movies but this was the first time I’d seen him in a sex scene or run through the halls of a school stripping his clothes off and diving into the pool naked. Is this really Robin Williams’ penis we’re seeing??? (I’m guessing it was a stunt penis)

The movie, written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, starts off showing us the type of relationship Lance Clayton had with his son Kyle. Kyle is a jerk. He’s disrespectful to his father, treats his best friend like a skycap, and is obsessed with deviant porn. No one likes him at school, either. Lance is an aspiring writer who has had four books rejected. He’s dating a teacher at school but lately she’s been paying attention to someone else. His life isn’t what he thought it would be. He’s starting to feel like a failure, especially when other people succeed on the first try what he’s been trying his whole life to accomplish. Then Kyle dies…while masturbating. And to save him and his son embarrassment, he sets the death up like it’s a suicide and writes a note to go with it. But no one seems to care. His girlfriend, who has always wanted to keep their relationship a secret, is becoming more distant. He has no one to reach out to; no one at the school feels the need to go to grief counseling because of Kyle’s death.

            But then someone decides to publish Kyle’s police report and suicide note in the school newspaper. Suddenly, the whole school makes it absurdly clear just what a bunch of douche bags they are. Seriously, what kind of person gloms on to another person’s grief? Everyone cares about Kyle now. He is the hero of the school. Lance’s once failing poetry class is now always full of kids taking the class just to find out more about Kyle. Kids who were once trying to pass off the lyrics to the Bowie/Mercury tune “Under Pressure” as poems are now capable of long, tortured elegies regarding Kyle. Lance gets inspired and writes a diary under Kyle’s name. This has a chain reaction. He’s almost happy that his work is being distributed even if it isn’t under his own name. He gets invited to be on a national talk show and the school dedicates a day to Kyle. When Lance gets up on stage, he finally can’t take it anymore. He blurts out the truth that Kyle died while masturbating and he is the one who wrote it the diary. Of course, everyone who seemed to care so much about Kyle now is upset with Lance. His girlfriend slaps him and clings to another man, and everyone is angry. But this is the very thing that seems to free Lance. It’s like he was making a huge fool out of everyone, they just didn’t know it. But to me, it was beautiful. None of them actually knew Kyle (except for his best friend) so everyone was idolizing someone just because he died. They never took the time to get to know him while he was alive.

            So bravo Bobcat and Robin…you’ve made me well up like no other. Or perhaps I’m just getting older and more sentimental. Either way, brilliant!