“He died as he lived: masturbating.” Credit: magnolia pictures

Sometimes it feels like Robin Williams is the source of all the
melancholy in the world. You know? Like the Fates took all the joy that
Robin Williams ever possessed or would possess and wove it into one
magical pair of rainbow suspenders, which were stolen by a witch some
time in the early 1980s, forcing him to transition into Adult Human
Pants (held up by the Belt of Gloom), leaving nothing inside but a
vacuous, suspender-shaped quarry of despair. And we all. Might. Fall.
In.

I have never met the man. But I have felt the suck of his sadness
through the screen in World’s Greatest Dad, a brutally bleak
comedy written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait. In it, Williams
(beautifully cast, for the aforementioned reason) is Lance Clayton,
single father, medium failure (“I am a writer”), and unpopular
high-school poetry teacher. When his teenage son, Kyle, a cruel,
sex-obsessed asshole (kids really are a bunch of manipulative shits,
aren’t they?), dies autoerotic-asphyxiatorially, Lance tries (out of
love, because this is what parents do) to salvage his offspring’s
reputation. He forges, in Kyle’s name, the diary of a tortured poet who
never existed at all, Kyle becomes a sort of high-school folk hero (an
empty vessel for other students’ everythings), and Lance gets a book
deal and a crisis of conscience.

World’s Greatest Dad is rough, funny, smart stuff. Even
Lance’s tiny successes have a pathos that’s almost too sad to bear (his
pinnacle is a series of greeting cards with the slogans “I’m not
monkeying around!” and “I’m not pussyfootin’ around!”). And Williams
punches you right in the gut with that pathos. This is a trudging, good
movie. recommended

Due to the vagaries of Hollywood, we ran this review a week early. The actual opening date for World’s Greatest Dad is Friday, September 4.

Lindy West was born an unremarkable female baby in Seattle, Washington. The former Stranger writer covered movies, movie stars, exclamation points, lady stuff, large frightening fish, and much, much more....

7 replies on “<i>World’s Greatest Dad</i>: Pathos Punch”

  2. It seems that Lindy like me has seen Robin Williams in a few movies. His style is a perfect match for this film. Williams can make you hate good people with his (I call it) brilliant acting. But, he can also make you hate his acting because it might actually make you think about yourself and your feelings and that scares the hell out of most people so they pan him.

    Thanks Lindy!

  3. When they were shooting this up on Sunset Hill, Robin stopped in Rain City Video late one night and picked out a stack of DVDs . . . he talked movies with us and yeah, he seemed . . . sad. But you know, my dad was sad back before he had heart surgery, something about lack of blood flow to the brain . . .

  4. Robin Williams was interviewed on Fresh Air a year or two back and he was remarkably reserved. He was funny, yeah, and towards the end he got a little manic but a far cry from his “usual” interview style of climbing the walls and breaking out every accent and impression in the book. It was remarkably insightful.

  6. I couldn’t get past the first paragraph which felt a bit to obnoxious for my taste, but the rest seemed alright. Why was there no mention of the fact that it was filmed here? =( I thought that was pretty cool and should be mentioned.

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