I suppose having your son accidentally die while masturbating isn’t how comedies usually start, particularly when the incident isn’t treated as a joke; but that’s how Bobcat Goldthwait works. In aiming his fourth film, World’s Greatest Dad, towards middle-aged grown-ups rather than the genre’s typical teenage audience, he symbolically does so by literally killing a teenager.
The teen in question is Kyle, played with perfect scumminess by Daryl Sabara (Remember him? The boy from the Spy Kids movies?), a real asshole of a kid whose high school outcast status, for once, is justified by his behavior. He’s foul-mouthed, lazy, shows no respect for anybody, exploits others, and doesn’t seem to have any interest outside of Internet porn and computer games. Sort of like the composite version of what the average person imagines a 4chan /b/tard would be like.
In the Q&A that followed the screening, Goldthwait explains that he doesn’t like how studios gear R-rated comedies towards teenagers, no doubt referring to the recent popularity of Superbad and its imitators. Interesting, then, that he seems to model Kyle somewhat on Jonah Hill’s Superbad character—so foul and shameless that you can’t help but laugh at their behavior. An important difference is that here we see Kyle through the eyes of others, from his pushover best friend Andrew to his poor single dad Lance, in what may be Robin Williams’ best comedic role. This makes Kyle’s antics even more unbearable, as we see how that type of teenage crudeness exhausts and confounds their well-meaning parents (something strategically missing from teen comedies).
Lance, a failed writer, covers up Kyle’s auto-erotic asphyxiation by hanging his body and forging a particularly moving suicide note. It becomes Lance’s one and only hit as a writer, which he uses as a platform to launch a writing career. It’s a familiar story of an artist learning his lesson, but what keeps it fresh is Goldthwait’s subversive take on the normal trajectory of the character. Lance’s journey is a journey to lose his rewards instead of gaining them: it becomes his goal to ditch his love interest, undo his artistic success and reject his son’s social worth. As sick as it sounds, it’s pretty awesome to see a story about a single dad realizing that his son was a douchebag and ultimately finds happiness after his death. World’s Greatest Dad touches on many of life’s hypocrisies, including those we give to the deceased. Just because they’re dead doesn’t mean they’re suddenly sacred. It’s a controversial idea, partially because teen suicide is a real problem, but the film ducks it by calling attention to why such a tragedy would affect people so much and why it can be so easily misused by opportunists.
The heart of the film, the reason why it works so well, is Robin Williams’ earnest performance. Lance’s extreme wrongdoing is offset by his sad innocent demeanor. Every time he indulges Kyle’s demands only to be repayed with a rejection of the father-son relationship he wants from him, it’s another ball in Lance's sympathy basket. Williams also sells the comedy through a subdued presence far from his usual manic run-around.
While I myself have yet to breed, I do have a Dad and I do know other Dads. There’s two ways a father can love a son. A) He loves him because of who he is. B) He loves him in spite of who he is. Sometimes it’s hard to admit that you belong in column B. In World’s Greatest Dad, a father is forced to reexamine his relationship with his son after he’s gone. Lance’s love for Kyle is never questioned, but the film dares to go beyond that fatherly love and actually look at the situation in the bigger picture. When it comes down to it, how fair is it to apply a father’s point-of-view to a person’s legacy?
