God Bless America

Frank (Joel Murray) is slightly overweight, a divorcee, and works in an office cubical. He typifies middle America. What sets him apart? He fantasizes about shooting his neighbor’s screaming infant into a thousand bloody pieces.

Fed up with society’s unrelenting cruelty and obsession with fame and materialism, Frank eventually acts on his fantasies and embarks on a killing spree in an attempt to rid the world of the morally corrupt. God Bless America starts strong but lags at the end as director Bobcat Goldthwait attempts to juggle sensational comedic violence with serious social satire.  

We are introduced to Frank right as he loses hope for himself and society. His ex-wife is getting remarried to a younger man, his daughter despises him and in the course of one afternoon, he is fired from work and diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. On television, he sees the glorification of the talentless and the exploitation of the innocent. 

Some of Goldthwait’s dialogue is a little heavy handed as he blatantly lays out Frank’s ideology in a lengthy monologue. However, his parody of a Bill Riley-esque talking head and a reality show that features airborne tampons is so sharp and disturbingly accurate that I could overlook it. In this opening section, Goldthwait does a good job of constructing a morally destitute world that makes the audience feel just as hopeless as Frank.

Frank contemplates suicide while watching a reality show about self entitled brats’ sixteenth birthday parties. With a gun aimed at the back of his throat, he watches Chloe (Maddie Hasson) brag about her attractiveness, bully her parents and throw a tantrum after receiving an Audi instead of an Escalade. Rather than kill himself, Frank decides to kill Chloe instead. 

This plays out in a well balanced scene where the comedic and satirical elements work together seamlessly. Hasson’s Chloe is so vile and Murray’s Frank is so timid and unassertive that watching him unceremoniously shoot Chloe in her luxury car is deeply satisfying. 

Frank then teams up with Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr), a sixteen year old who went to high school with Chloe and despised her even more than Frank. She convinces him to continue his killing spree, selling it as an opportunity to eliminate the world’s insufferable people. Roxy has an unending laundry list of what makes a person deserve to take “the big dirt nap,” including people who high five or use rockstar as an adjective. Frank allows her to join him, and the relationship that results is a strange reinvention of Bonnie and Clyde. 

Barr is a cheery murderer and manages to spit out her wordy Juno-like dialogue with ease, however, it is Murray’s Frank that holds the film together. He seems truly disturbed when American Superstar, a mock American Idol type show, ridicules a mentally handicapped participant. His weepy blue eyes and defeated posture in the opening section give the film an emotional foundation. Murray’s convincing performance enables you to root for a grown man who kills teenagers. 

Frank’s motives are always clear. As he repeatedly states, he just wants people to be nice to one another. I would argue that Goldthwait’s film loses its thematic credibility as Frank attempts to achieve peace by instigating violence. His intentions are moral, however, his methods are not. In contrast, Roxy just wants revenge on those who make her feel like an outsider. Frank provides the film with emotional depth, but Roxy’s visceral motivations flattens it out. 

After a much too long second half with a uninspired twist, the film reaches its climax as Frank holds the entire audience of American Superstar hostage. In yet another clunky monologue, Frank delivers generic lines like, “We’ve lost our kindness,” and “What have we become?” Of course, Goldthwait wants us to asks these questions of ourselves as Frank unblinkingly stares into the camera, however, these lines seem empty coming from someone I watched kill dozens of people for the past hour and a half. 

I would be lying if I said I hadn't wanted to put a slugger in a Kardashian myself at one point or another, but as God Bless America continues it is harder to defend Frank and Roxy’s crusade. Does the man who takes up two parking spaces deserve the same fate as protestors at a soldier’s funeral? The line between jerks and the truly wretched dissolves, and with it so did my attention for the film.