{"id":7991,"date":"2012-09-03T19:05:35","date_gmt":"2012-09-03T23:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=7991"},"modified":"2014-09-09T11:55:20","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T16:55:20","slug":"god-bless-america-2011-bobcat-goldthwait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/7991","title":{"rendered":"God Bless America (2011, Bobcat Goldthwait)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of all the loud genre movies I rented this week, this one was the champion. A lot like Super<\/a><\/em> (or a comedy Falling Down<\/em>), a hilarious piece of wish-fulfillment that turns ever-darker. Joel “Bill’s brother” Murray hates his life (in which everyone calls him “bro”) but mostly hates self-centered airheads on television, so after he’s fired then misdiagnosed with a Joe vs. the Volcano<\/a><\/em>-esque brain-plot-device, he chooses to go on a rampage instead of killing himself, killing a spoiled sweet-16 reality star, then her parents. It gets uncomfortably more similar to Super<\/em> when Frank unwillingly attracts a teen-girl sidekick (Roxy) whom he keeps calling “Juno”.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Watching this a week after some nut shot up a Batman<\/em> screening, I was surprised at the scene where Frank and Roxy shoot up an underattended movie matinee because a row of teens wouldn’t shut up and put down their phones (scored to a cover of Bjork’s It’s Oh So Quiet<\/em>). They kill a republican TV talking-head, a guy who takes up two parking spots and a funeral-protesting cult leader. The media keeps misinterpreting their motives, and the killers grow more comfortable with their motels-and-murders lifestyle, gearing up towards a lovingly-shot slow-motion suicidal massacre on a live American Idol<\/em>-like show.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Excellent movie, more complicated than it seems.<\/p>\n

The AV Club gets it:<\/p>\n

It isn’t a funhouse mirror; it’s just a mirror. The debasement on its airwaves isn’t some Ow My Balls<\/em>-style future Idiocracy, but rather a straightforward reflection of what’s already present… The key point about God Bless America<\/em> is that it’s extreme but not exaggerated, a dark comedy that indulges \u2014 and questions \u2014 a violent, misanthropic fantasy about laying waste to the cultural landscape while staying grounded in a recognizable reality. In other words, Goldthwait isn’t doing the satirical equivalent of shooting ducks in a barrel here, though his recreations of televised stupidity do offer a funny twinge of recognition. What interests him more is how we live in that culture, particularly those who are alienated by it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Writer\/director Goldthwait:<\/p>\n

I could have made a whiney movie or a documentary about how nasty our culture is, and a couple of other people that may see things the way I do would have liked it. Or I could have made a comedy that was very aggressively saying, \u201cCram it\u201d to all these people, and that’s what I chose to do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of all the loud genre movies I rented this week, this one was the champion. A lot like Super (or a comedy Falling Down), a hilarious piece of wish-fulfillment that turns ever-darker. Joel “Bill’s brother” Murray hates his life (in which everyone calls him “bro”) but mostly hates self-centered airheads on television, so after he’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1049,1610],"class_list":["post-7991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-2010s","tag-bobcat-goldthwait"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7991"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9344,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7991\/revisions\/9344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}