World's Greatest Dad

Few films slowly and subtly build their dark comedic landscapes as effectively as Bobcat Goldthwait's World's Greatest Dad, and the finished product is an hilarious mixture of aerobic angst and ideological agony. The facts: single father Lance Clayton (Robin Williams) works as a high school poetry teacher whose elective class is none to popular. He's been trying to sell a book for most of his adult life with no success and his anti-social son Kyle (Daryl Sabara) disdainfully dismisses his heartfelt attempts to establish a loving relationship. Well, one day Kyle accidentally chokes himself to death and after discovering the body, Lance can't let the police find him in such a disheveled state. So he writes a suicide note and moves him to the closet, making it look like Kyle traditionally took his own life. But unfortunately for Lance, the suicide note is discovered online and quickly disseminated to the majority of his high school's student body. Much to his surprise, Kyle becomes something of a legend as the students cast him as a tragic misunderstood hero, a misguided object of idolatry and veneration. The only thing Lance can do is go along, and soon his poetry class is full of admirers and he's invited to Dr. Dana's (Deborah Horne) television show to plug his conjured version of Kyle's diary. But all good things must come to an end, and just as the high school library is being renamed in Kyle's honour, with a special appearance by loveable singer-songwriter Bruce Hornsby, the truth, and Lance's shot at the big time (including his first book deal), comes crashing down. Wherein lies the ideological agony of the film insofar as realistically speaking Lance's co-workers etc. are upset because he lied to them, but, ideologically speaking, they're even more upset that he told the truth, thereby ruining the cult of Kyle by delegitimizing their exhaulted hero. Things return to normal for good 'ole Lance and he looks like his life has improved remarkably in the aftermath, Goldthwait's succinct salute to Lance's courageous individualism. By showing us what Kyle was like before his deification and then forcing us to awkwardly watch the absurd heights said deification reaches (notably the recurring shots of Kyle's uncharismatic comic "portrait"), Goldthwait maniacally and ingeniously establishes an elegant elegy for what it feels like to squirm, not as raunchy or frank as a well-crafted John Waters film, but just as resolute in producing unsettling tremors of intellectual discomfort.