God Bless America
Written and Directed
By: Bobcat Goldthwait
Starring: Joel
Murray and Tara Lynn Barr
Director of Photography: Bradley Stonesifer, Editors: David
Hopper and Jason Stewart, Production Designer: Natalie Sanfilippo, Original
Music: Matt Kollar
The
success of Bobcat Goldthwait has rested on one essential fixture in his comedy:
as much as you might find him offensive and vile, he is a “truth teller,” as
the kids like to say. His comedy and his films might be over-the-top fantasies
that ignore real world consequences, but they are fantasies that we are all
supposed to hold deep within our repressed hearts. Consider that during the
first five minutes of God Bless America,
his latest and most direct polemic rant against American culture, the
protagonist has a dream where he murders a loud, constantly crying, and ugly
baby. Goldthwait assumes that all of us secretly want to murder that baby as
well, along with many other dumb, awful Americans that populate our culture.
Goldthwait
has some truth in God Bless America,
but it’s been diluted and packaged in such an odd package that never seems to
congeal. There’s promise to his work, the same way Shakes the Clown begins as a seriously dark look into comedy and
alcoholism, but he gives up on making a bolder statement for making an easy and
not particularly clever one. Add to that the violent fantasies God Bless America indulges, and Goldthwait’s
nihilism isn’t just lacking in profundity, it’s making those he holds upright
seem just as misguided.
