9. God Bless America
The Hype: Bobcat Goldthwait has built a reputation for pulling off a remarkable filmic act: he can make movies that are simultaneously extraordinarily dark and yet quite compassionate. In
Sleeping Dogs Lie and
World's Greatest Dad, he made topics like bestiality and teen suicide hilarious, but never at the expense of his characters. With
God Bless America, he was poised to take on some utterly ripe subject matter: the USA's obsession with negativity in its media, from terrible reality television to vicious cable news pundits. It seemed the perfect recipe for success.
The Reality: There are a lot of problems with
God Bless America, all revolving around a core flaw: this is a cruel movie pleading for kindness. Goldthwait is obviously distressed by the lack of civility in society, and that shows in his characters, but the response to this meanness is murder. And this isn't done satirically - the film revels in the vicious killing of fictional analogues to Bill O'Reilly and
Super Sweet Sixteen brats, among others. What purpose does this serve? It only undermines Goldthwait's point.