World's Greatest Dad

World's Greatest Dad is a movie about a good writer, but failed writer (Robin Williams) who is the father of a perverse, disgusting young teen (Daryl Sabara). This, "great dad" Lance Clayton, writes his son's suicide note and "journal" after his son's (Kyle) unexpected death. The note and journal soon circulate through school and causes everyone in the school to feel bad about hating Kyle (the perverse son) and change their entire opinion of them.

Read on, this will be a spoiler review

A movie like this [SPOILERS-->] can only end one of two ways. Either Lance gets discovered by everyone and gets thrown down from the pedestal he built on his son's shiny, new image. Or he discovers that lying about who his son really was is not what he wants and so he tears himself off of the pedestal. The movie spends the first half just building up the characters of Father and Son in a non-directional way, but this is okay as you assume that once the characters are established the movie will find its story. While dealing with the subject of death, and in such darkly-mature/immature situation as this death was, the movie feels as though it will solemnly, and sarcastically lead you down the path of dark truth, leave you at the other side realizing that the world is not a better place from this new perspective, laugh at your stupidity, and then dance away like the Pied Piper: Singing happily as you retch from distress.

No. This movie actually ends (unrealistically) pretty positively. After he is realized as a fraud, and after he takes a contrived, uneccesary, and in-a-real-world-would-totally-get-arrested-for bath in the school's swimming pool (naked, of course), he settles down with Kyle's only real friend and the good, quirky old woman next door to watch movies and reflect on what he has learned about life and being decent to true memories.

Robin Williams is a comedian. I find that comedians (because they are over-the-top so often) are not afraid to reach certain emotional levels which other people are afraid reach because they look stupid out of context, though great within. As such, he can be "over-the-top" when he needs to be, which actually can be "spot on" when other actors would miss that mark. However, Robin Williams is over the top only when he does NOT need to be and makes some scenes rather obnoxious to watch.

Daryl Sabara is the reason why you think the movie may be heading somewhere. And I think if someone else had been given the script they would have played Kyle much differently. However, Daryl plays Kyle as a disgusting person, and you do not like him very much for that. Though without showing any sympathetic back story (such as a mother dying, or something), or any personal sympathy, Daryl causes you to be interested in Kyle because of his mannerisms and the way he talks/acts. You are never hate him, and actually feel bad for him, though you hate what he does/says. His performance was stellar, but half way through he dies, and when the non-direction of the film should be taking direction, it doesn't.

I would not recommend this movie to anyone. It is rather funny, especially in the first half. But because of inconsistancys in the directing (I.E. The man who is jealous of Lance's fame is seen looking up the coroner's reports [I wonder how he got them], and in the next scene they are playing golf together happily and there is no script/acting/or directional hint to that coroner report again in the entire movie. [I wonder if they edited out half of the original story]) the movie is without purpose or direction.

If I had to number it, it gets a 65/100