World's Greatest Dad

World's Greatest Dad
Robin Williams Latest

SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS
Fair warning up front. This is a deranged, manic, dark comedy. Most of the movie revolves around a plot moment from around the 30 minute mark. And so I'm going to mention it here in a bit but first the topic I'm going to address is the set up of those thirty minutes. The film does what it can to try and get you to care about Robin Williams. And you do feel bad for him. This is because he has a son whose into snuff porn and Auto erotic asphyxiation. Then on top of that this is a kid whose the worlds biggest dick. He's an ass hole to everyone, including his best(only) friend. But back to Robin Williams. He's a poetry teacher at his son's school and also an aspiring writer. He's written five novel, not a one that has been published. He wants to be rich and critically accepted. He has a secret girlfriend whose one of the other teachers who keeps mysteriously canceling on him. And the one time Robin calls her on it. she gets bitchy and attacks him.
So you spend the first 30 minutes wondering if she is stepping out on Robin. There's also another teacher who is Robin's "friend". Sort of. But you can tell they are rivals more than friends and when he publishes something in a major magazine, Robin gets jealous, especially when his "girlfriend" starts spending more time with his "friend".
So at this point, you can tell that there are things going on behind the scenes but because the movie is told from just Robin's perspective you arn't entirely certain what's going to happen. And then that key moment happens. After a dinner where Robin introduces his son to his girlfriend(his son is an ass to her), his son goes home and Robin takes his girlfriend back to her place. When he gets back to his son, he minds something he didn't expect. His son is dead. This is done in a humourous fashion in that he died by trying to suffocate himself to masturbate. But having more respect for his son than that, he makes it look like he killed himself and writes him a suicide note. Well days go by and the school newspaper some how gets a hold of the police report and publishes the suicide note. This adversely affects the student population, everyone turning around and suddenly being sad he died and pretending that they used to be friends.
Things spiral out of control from there including Robin publishing his son's Diary( a new novel he wrote over the weekend) and appearing on a opera like show about this until finally in a renaming ceremony of some building does Robin reveal the charade. He then jumps into a pool naked(symbolism, or a chance to show off robin Williams naked, could go either way) and then the film ends as a musical number plays while the ripple effects of the revelation affects the school.
The humor is really dark stuff. You'd probably need a pretty dark and twisted mind to fully appreciate the humor. There are a few jokes here and there that are a real hoot, particularly the stuff involving the students in the school and their sudden affection for the Son. for any one who has seen Robert Rodriguez' family film, Spy Kids, its pretty jarring to see the lead boy from that series go on to play such a fucked up kid that really really could use some help in the world. I will admit I went into this moving not expecting much and I got some laughs and found it an interesting movie. Being a dark humor type film there are some moments where you are cringing at some of the stuff from the line being crossed, but the film is pretty good at balancing these with enough of the lighter moments in the movie to really balance the film into perspective. And in reality, you really do sympathize with Robin Williams character for just trying to do the right thing at first but being corrupted by the possibility.
So would I recommend this movie? Not necessarily as a theatrical experience, this isn't district 9 or Up where you really need that big screen effect, but it certainly would be worth your five dollars at the blockbuster truth be told you could see a lot worse movies this summer(the recent horror movies sans Drag me to Hell come to mind). So be Cautious with your dollar, because you vote with it about what you want to see in theaters during the next four years.