Imagine my surprise when I found out that “World’s Greatest Dad,” a funny and somewhat deep film, was written and directed by the annoying, squeaky-voiced comedian Bobcat Goldthwait. Shocking because the last time I remember seeing him anywhere was on “Hollywood Squares,” a position that usually signals the downfall of a celebrity. Yet, here he has fashioned an interesting film that deals with human nature and how we really feel towards people.
Lance Clayton (Robin Williams) is a high school poetry teacher who is in a relationship with another teacher at the school, Claire (Alexie Gilmore). The only family he has is his son, Kyle (Daryl Sabara), an obnoxious, rude brat who spends his days mouthing off to everyone, including his best (and only) friend, Andrew (Evan Martin). Another one of Kyle’s pastimes involves pleasuring himself, and it is during one of these incidents that he accidentally kills himself.
Lance hides the true conditions of his son’s death and makes it look like Kyle hung himself, even going so far as to compose a suicide note. The sympathy for his loss becomes overwhelming at school. Kids who had never liked Kyle, or even knew him, start idolizing him. Lance, a failed author with five rejected novels, takes the praise he gets from the beautifully written suicide not as inspiration to forge an entire diary that he claims was Kyle’s. Lance seems to be enjoying the new-found attention he’s getting, especially from his girlfriend, but how long can he keep up the charade?
It’s interesting to watch everyone’s transformation throughout the film. Lance, who still loves the boy but sometimes just can’t stand his attitude, makes him out to be an angel, “He was a sweet boy” as he says on the “Dr. Dana” TV show. This is actually one of the most amusing sections of the film. The topic of the show is signs of suicide and Lance is brought on as a guest to tell everyone Kyle’s story.
As he begins to tell the story, there are moments when he is clearly laughing as he’s saying nice things about his son, but at least tries to cover them up with tears. It’s amazing that no one said anything. Robin Williams is just that good with his performance. This is another example of just how good Williams can be outside of his regular “insane comic” mode. He plays the character as being tolerant of his awful son, but even he slips on occasion.
Lance begins breaking down later on as it seems he genuinely starts feeling bad for what he’s doing, hiding under the guise of feeling responsible for Kyle’s death, but the doctor at school tells him that the published diary might help kids who are in the same condition as Kyle was, or at least the condition that Lance wrote about.
We also get to see the kids at the school transform from being mean to Kyle to wearing pictures of him on their shirts and hanging up posters dedicated to him. The principal, who was ready to put Kyle in a special needs class, even decides to dedicate the library to Kyle as a memorial. Another amusing scene comes when some girls fight over a CD that Lance says was Kyle’s. Earlier in the film, Kyle tells us how much he hates all music.
The ending itself is way too sudden and random, but overall, it doesn’t affect the effectiveness of the rest of the film. From the way the film had shown us how Lance changed in the first place, it would have been nice to see more of the gradual change that suddenly happens in the end. However, the last scene does end up being a fitting end for the characters.
In the end, we’re left with a simple fact. Both Kyle and his father were pretty bad people, Kyle for his behavioral problems and Lance for exploiting the situation of his son’s death. The kids who suddenly go from disliking or ignoring Kyle to idolizing him just goes to show that some people like fads as liking Kyle was suddenly a very cool thing. If the ending hadn’t been rushed, this could have been a great film, but as it is, it’s still a strangely fascinating one.
3/4 stars.