Looking for a movie to watch I googled 'most underrated movies of 2012.' After failing to find Bullhead online I settled for God Bless America. I remember thinking it looked like it would be subpar at best when I saw the trailers for it, but because the reviewer of the google site said it was good I gave it a shot. I ended up really enjoying this movie. God Bless America was outrageously violent and had a surplus of satire, but it worked well together. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie and would give it an 8.9/10.
In God Bless America we are introduced to Frank played by Joel Murray, (Small roles in The Artist, Larry the Cable Guy) an insomnic veteran living next door to a loud, douchey family, being disgusted by the recognizable mock reality shows he's seeing flipping through the channels. The next day Frank gets laid off work for a genuine nice offer taken poorly and goes home to receive a phone call for his ex-wife that his kid, transforming into a huge brat, no longer wishes to spend the weekend with him. With all this misery compiling at once Frank is ready to kill himself, literally gun in his mouth has an epithiney instead of killing himself, he should kill the incredible spoiled girl whiny to her dad cause he got her the wrong car on a fake Sweet Sixteen type show. After doing this a similarly minded classmate of the spoiled girl, Roxy, played by Tara Lynn Barr in her first feature film, joins Frank and the two embark a cross country killing spree of other "worthy" people. Despite this sounding like the darkest movie ever, and trust me its up there, the movie is quite funny. Despite morally knowing these two are doing wrong, you find yourself agreeing with them and in fact start to root for them.
Overall I thought the director, known comedian Bobcat Goldthwait who also directed, (World's Greatest Dad, The Man Show) did a very good job portraying his obvious cynical views of America. This is clearly a message movie seen in the dialogue between Frank and his co-worker and throughout the movie between Roxy and him talking about the things about America they hate. Although some of there criticisms could get to be pretty ridiculous (giving high fives, saying literally), there were a multitude of good points showing us how awful the entertainment we are seeming to turn to more and more. At the end of the movie you don't see Frank as a bad guy, you see him almost as a martyr to try and bring back the old America, where kids weren't as spoiled and people talked about things other than what was on television the previous night. The fact that I had to watch Zero Dark Thirty to return my patriotism to its normal level, tells you that Goldthwait got his point across. Overall I recommend God Bless America for both its entertainment, and its unique perspective of America.
I heard about this movie, and that it was done pretty well, but with the approach and subject matter basically glorifying a rampage/killer, the timing of it seemed odd with some of the shootings that occurred last year. I usually enjoy a satire, and one that is critical of American culture sounds interesting, but yeah, the killing spree aspect just seems a little weird.
ReplyDeleteBut, this is a good example of how far we've gotten with censorship (or lack of). Could you imagine a movie coming out like this in the '40s? Now that movies are considered art and covered by the 1st amendment, we're able to get very diverse films, that can often be uncomfortable.
Nice work here.
Ive always enjoyed message movies like you mentioned this one is. Its very interesting how you mentioned that this movie is dak yet it still is able to be funny. That combination can be very entertaining.
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