God Bless America is, quite frankly, a visceral catharsis of a movie. It’s a giant middle finger stuck up at popular culture, a violent lashing out at the glorification of ignorance and the obsession with shallow concerns that permeates our social consciousness. It’s a mental high five to anyone who has ever had the thought that they’re surrounded by idiots. Director Bobcat Goldthwait follows up his autoerotic asphyxiation comedy, World’s Greatest Dad, with the story of a common man (Joel Murray) and a plucky young teenager (Tara Lynne Barr) who get pushed so far by mindless reality TV and modern culture’s overpowering sense of entitlement that they go on a killing spree, mowing down the bratty teens of MTV and the conservative pundits of Fox News with gleeful abandon.
God Bless America is the movie that Idiocracy would have been if Idiocracy were able to fit its social satire within the framework of an effectively told story, instead of just being a dumb piece of fluff entertainment itself. Where that movie came out of the gate with a bunch of big ideas and sharp satire, by its end it just became a stupid action flick with easy solutions and tired storytelling tropes. God Bless America, conversely, gets more interesting as it goes on. At first it seems like it’s going to just be a gauntlet of destruction, going from points A to Z in a very straight, shoot ‘em up line—but complications get introduced throughout and the film grows more interesting as a result. The relationships change, they become more complex. The characters’ plan is altered as their motivations develop. By the time you get to the climax, you care enough about everyone involved that their fate actually means something to you.
Much of that credit needs to be given to Joel Murray. He’s just fantastic as the lead character, Frank. He’s complex, expressive, relatable, and he lends a lot of weight to scenarios that would have played as ridiculous or exploitive in the hands of a lot of other actors. Tara Lynne Barr is good as the young spitfire, Roxie, as well; though she’s less polished as an actor. Despite her inexperience, she’s got an innate charisma and is so full of peppy vim and vigor that you can’t help but be charmed by her. I imagine her work here is going to lead to several more opportunities in the future, and soon I could see her stealing roles from Chloe Moretz.
Watching these two actors play off of each other is a joy. Despite the fact that both of their characters are frustrated killers, they don’t share the same reason for being. He’s gruff and beaten down, she’s still full of youthful exuberance, and the actors play their relationship like the yin and yang of righteous violence coming together. At first she wants to off everybody who happens to annoy her throughout her day, but he insists they save their violent outbursts for people who truly deserve to die—that means Diablo Cody gets a pass, but Glen Beck must go down. Seems fair to me.
Surprisingly, where the film falters is in the parodies and bits of satire that act as its initial hook. We get facsimiles for most of the more annoying bits of modern culture: American Idol, TMZ, and the like, and Frank takes them down a peg in extended verbal tirades, and he takes them out with extended bursts of gunfire. A lot of it is funny, and every once in a while he makes you cheer; but it’s also in the jokes where the writing gets the clunkiest. Whenever Frank went off on one of his rants I found myself immediately taken out of the movie. His speeches are so crafted and purposeful that you don’t buy them as being delivered off the cuff. You can feel the film stopping and Bobcat’s voice coming in to preach his worldview. Every once in a while Frank says something deliciously awful that you’ve thought yourself a thousand times—and there’s a moment of joy in that—but ultimately things would have flowed better if the film didn’t keep pausing to explain itself.
Also, the script gets a little too specific with the pop culture references. Instead of coming up with his own stupid shows, which still could have been a reflection of the vapid bile we watch in real life, Goldthwait gives us exact copies of things that exist in reality. Instead of TMZ there’s TMI, instead of American Idol there’s American Superstar—complete with caricatures of all the real people who appear on the real shows. Big chunks of this film feel like an extended SNL sketch. The fact that so much time is spent on Frank’s thoughts about MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen, a show that hasn’t been relevant for several years already, just shows how badly the rest of the material is going to age over time. By making references to very current, sure to be briefly relevant pop culture phenomenons, God Bless America truncates its own relevance. It puts itself in danger of becoming one of the disposable channels of pop culture regurgitation that it hates. This is all theoretical musing about the movie’s eventual reputation though. For now, all we need to worry about is the fact that it’s a hilarious, pitch black comedy, an engaging character piece, and an effective little road film—which is enough for an easy recommendation.
