God Bless America (review)

I’m “biast” (pro): love Bobcat Goldthwaith; totally onboard with his despair at the state of American culture

I’m “biast” (con): none

(what is this about? see my critic’s minifesto)

So I just spent part of my second Independence Day in London watching Bobcat Goldthwait’s sarcastically dubbed God Bless America on a screener. I figured this was appropriate: I’m an American disillusioned with America and now with some longterm firsthand experience of how other countries do the whole life thing better... and yet I still cannot get behind this tedious soapbox of a movie. Oh, I sympathize with its attitudes: reality TV is a horror (this is true in the U.K., too); the U.S. is being misled by professional right-wing blowhards; crudity and violence rule American infotainment; general rudeness, selfishness, and even outright sociopathy has become a way of life. Our “hero” Frank (Joel Murray: Mad Men) laments that “no one has any shame anymore, and we’re supposed to celebrate it,” which I would be happy to wear on a T-shirt every day. But Goldthwait (World's Greatest Dad) -- as writer and director -- doesn’t know what to do with this except rage incoherently and ineffectively at the state of the world. See, Frank -- with his sidekick, teen Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr) -- hauls ass on a demented road trip around America shooting reality-TV queens and preachers who yell “God hates fags” and assholes who park across two spaces at the mall, his rampage set off by a (possibly) unfair firing from his cubicle-farm job and a diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. But... then what? What purpose does his rampage serve? How does this make the world any better? I am so on Goldthwait’s side, but he doesn’t have any answers. I’d love to hear it if he did. What does the world look like beyond the hellish end-of-empire American apocalypse? Goldthwait has no idea. And so God Bless America ends up having nothing to say except “Wah!!”