Review: God Bless America

Joel Murray is having a very, very bad time of it. Divorced, laid off from work, getting no love or respect from his revolting daughter, and recently diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour…he finally cracks it. But what makes him tip over the edge is not really any of the above things. Oh, they contribute alright. But, no Murray is enraged by what he sees as the culture of meanness and vacuousness throughout the media. Reality TV, tabloid journalism, political pundits on both sides of the aisle earn his ire. And he’s gonna do something about it. He’s Peter Finch with a gun, people, so look out! He decides to kill the disgracefully self-absorbed and bitchy high schooler reality TV star polluting his TV screen. In committing this act, Murray earns the attention of another girl at the school, played by Tara Lynne Barr. This social misfit seems to share Murray’s disdain for modern pop culture, and although she has way more targets on her hit list than he does, he nonetheless takes the girl on as a cohort, as they go on a killing spree of the rude, obnoxious and vacuous across the country.

 

Writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait (Yes, the guy from “Police Academy 4: The Good One”) tries to atone for the notoriously pillocked “Shakes the Clown” with this 2011 black comedy attack on braindead popular culture. Especially earning Mr. Goldthwait’s ire is the ‘culture of mean’, that is the likes of Fox News and reality TV. He also frames his points in the narrative of a “Taxi Driver” meets “Falling Down” plot. I agree with the scorn that Goldthwait has for a lot of his targets here, and the film is a lot better than the repugnant and racist “Falling Down”, but this isn’t really my kind of thing and Goldthwait probably reaches a little too far for targets. Yes, the pop culture of today can indeed be mind-numbing and empty, but I still enjoy some of that culture, and don’t think all of it deserves scorn…or loads of ‘murder death kills’ for that matter (God Bless “Demolition Man”!). The shot at “TMZ” is particularly unfair, I feel. I think the shows/people discussed on “TMZ” deserve much more scorn than the show/website itself. The “American Idol” attacks, meanwhile, are simply outdated by what, five years at least? The Bill O’Reilly attacks, however are certainly valid and relatively successfully done. The guy really did go after the mother of a fallen soldier (not to mention the son of a 9/11 victim), on more than one occasion actually. In fact, as much as the parody of O’Reilly is a tad overdone, this film understands what most other attacks on O’Reilly don’t seem to tap into: Forget his politics or any bias (Sean Hannity is a much better target for that. O’Reilly has stepped off the reservation from time to time at least), the problem with Bill O’Reilly is that he’s just a mean bully who is discourteous to his guests under the guise of ‘no spin’. He’s a hack because if he were truly good at his job (Notice I said ‘good’ and not a ‘ratings success’?), he wouldn’t need to resort to such aggressive behaviour to achieve his aims of not letting his guests run off on piddling non-answers.

 

But back to our main character. You see, it doesn’t help that the person delivering the sometimes interesting and non-partisan rants is the rather forgettable Joel Murray, who isn’t much of an actor and renders those rants not as effective as they could’ve been. Now Bill Murray, that guy could’ve pulled it off (Randy Quaid would’ve been ideal, but he seems to have lost his mind for real and gone into hiding in Canada a few years back). But I guess ‘ol Bill wasn’t in Zed’s price range and we get the guy you go to when Brian Doyle-Murray is too pricey. Having said that, some of these rants, pointed or not, come off as somewhat inorganic and clearly the words of the filmmaker. So it’s a tricky thing to pull off and Mr. Goldthwait hasn’t done so.

 

The other issue I have with the film is that the Murray character doesn’t behave consistently. No, not even for a mentally unstable person. I refused to believe that this guy, based on what we know of him as a guy with ‘family values’ (warped or not) would allow this girl to tag along let alone kill. Kindred spirits or not, it isn’t credible. Not even remotely believable or consistent with his established character. Sure, the guy has snapped, but he hasn’t completely changed morals, surely. This is a guy who flat-out refuses to have anything more than a platonic relationship with this girl, and won’t let her persuade him to kill just anybody who pisses her off. That’s not how it works. In fact, he’s actually more likeable than D-Fens from “Falling Down” or Travis Bickle in “Taxi Driver”, mostly because he has some genuinely valid points (But no I do not agree with his solutions one iota!).

 

It’s a well-shot film, it’s clear that either Goldthwait or cinematographer Bradley Stonesifer have seen a lot of David Lynch and P.T. Anderson films, that’s for sure. The film also has a genuinely brilliant moment where a documentary on the Mai Lai massacre gets blamed for Murray and Tara Lynn Barr (who, by the way, is way too much like “Juno” for a film that otherwise seems to hate “Juno” as much as I do) shooting noisy patrons in the movie theatre. It’s very funny, and just plain something I agreed with. Movies get blamed way too often for sickos who commit violent acts. The funniest moment is with the very non-PC gun dealer, even if the steal from “Jackie Brown” was a tad half-hearted. The guy is hilarious. Points off, though for the lame insult ‘fuck pie’, which in addition to sounding stupid, I’m pretty sure makes absolutely no sense conceptually let alone as an insult to be hurled.

 

This isn’t laugh-out-loud funny for the most part, but it’s definitely more satirical and successful than “Falling Down”, thus it gets a higher rating from me than that racist piece of crap did. Although sometimes quite uneasy to watch, it’s clearly not meant to be taken seriously, let alone literally. However, it’s not my kind of genre in the first place, and although I appreciate some of the points being made (We really do live in a mean culture and some of it is truly without merit or necessity), I don’t think this is a helpful film right now. It’s not nearly as dangerous as “Falling Down” (and even then I don’t believe movies are harmful to anyone of sound mind in the first place), but in this day and age of gun violence in the US…isn’t that a much bigger problem than vacuous, mean-spirited pop culture? I think so (though it was cute that the one Conservative belief Murray held was less gun control!), and that, combined with unpersuasive performances keep me from recommending this. I’m just not a believer in vigilantism, neither do I find it credible nor helpful, so obviously this one was never going to really win me over (And I found the fact that it was a teen girl doing some of the killing a tad hard to swallow. It should’ve been a boy. Mohammad-Malvo, anyone?) I did appreciate the lighter tone, though and I have no doubt that there will be admirers of this film out there, just not me.

 

Rating: C