It’s been a long time since Robin Williams made a (purposefully) funny movie that was actually funny. He’s done a couple of serious roles in the last decade or so that haven’t been completely terrible, but he’s just not been funny. Actually, he hasn’t been funny since the 80s; I have to wonder who the people are who find his boring, predictable antics on awards show and Leno to be funny.
Bobcat Goldthwait, meanwhile, was never funny as a comedian, but he’s been building a weirdly subversive secondary career. Shakes the Clown was like a rite of passage for me, and while I didn’t see Stay (aka Sleeping Dogs Lie), any relationship movie that centers around a guy finding out his girlfriend once fucked a dog is aces in my book. (He also hung out with Kurt Cobain, which imbues instant coolness to me.)
Bobcat’s movie history means I pay attention when he has a new project, and his latest, World’s Greatest Dad, sounds exactly like the sick – yet weirdly human – shit I expect out of him. And while Robin Williams signing on to the lead role doesn’t exactly get my motor running, I have to have faith that Bobcat knows what he’s doing.
JoBlo breaks the story and here’s how they describe the film: Williams will play a failed writer teaching poetry at the high school.
When his teenage son dies during a freak masturbation accident, he
tries to cover up the embarrassment by claiming the death was a
suicide. When the father’s faked suicide note gets attention, he
decides to fake an entire journal to get his writing career off the
ground.
That’s awesome – a square shot at the current memoir-obsessed culture, which is just filled with frauds. Let’s hope that Williams doesn’t make his failed writer character also be a ‘master’ of voices and characters.