World's Greatest Dad

Yesterday I had the opportunity to check out Robin William's newest movie, World's Greatest Dad. Williams, no stanger to indie movies (see One Hour Photo, his brilliant takeoff on the horror genre) delivers a performance that elicits both laughter and tears. Let me start off by saying I've never been the biggest fan of Robin Williams. I liked him enough in Mrs. Doubtfire and he got the job done in Photo. In Dad, Williams throws aside all of the audiences preconceived notions about his work. While he is obviously recognizable, his depiction of a grieving father is radically different from anything he has ever done.

The movie follows William's Lance Clayton, a single father who teaches at the school his son Kyle (Daryl Sabara of Spy Kids fame) attends. Lance, a single dad (for reasons unmentioned by the movie) tries his hardest to connect to his loner of a son, but Kyle would rather sit in his room with the lights off while surfing the internet. Sabara's Kyle is such an insufferable asshole that he makes you want to get up and punch the screen. He hyper-analyzes every thing his father says and does. He treats his one friend in the world, Andrew (the excellent newcomer Evan Martin) like a sack of crap. He rejects every one of Lance's attempts to spend time together. To complicate things even further, Lance walks in on his son strangling himself while masturbating. There is such an obvious disconnect between father and son that it makes the viewer connect with Williams in a way he has never been able to achieve in his previous movies. In yet another attempt to reach out to the boy, Lance invites Kyle out to dinner with his girlfriend, fellow teacher Claire (Alexie Gilmore). Kyle pretends to like Claire, while truthfully he lusts after her and takes pictures of her under the table with his camera phone. Lance drops him off at home, only to find him in his room later that evening with a rope around his neck, dead from erotic-asphyxiation.

What ensues is an even blend of hilarity and sorrow. Lance decides he doesn't want his son to be found this way, so he stages the scene to make it seem like Kyle hung himself because he was depressed, faking a suicide note in the process. When the suicide note leaks to the school newspaper, Kyle becomes a posthumous cult figure. Students who had previously steered clear of the boy (for good reason, director Bobcat Goldthwait is quick to point out) begin to wear buttons adorned with Kyle's face, join Lance's previously near-empty poetry class, and fight over who liked him the most. Rife with irony, awkward moments, and genuine sympathy for Lance, World's Greatest Dad simultaneously tugs at your heartstrings and makes you laugh out loud. The overused "Dark Comedy" doesn't really apply here, because it's more of a hybrid emotional drama and ironic "comedy." Whatever you want to label this movie, it is a true masterpiece.