God Bless America (2011)

Directed by: Bobcat Goldthwait

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take it any more!”  You can almost hear Peter Finch screaming inside the head of mild-mannered middle-aged divorcee Frank (Joel Murray) as he watches decency evaporate in the face of reality-TV and talk-show excess.  When life deals him a couple of extra hammer blows, something snaps, releasing his inner fascist, and he takes to the road blowing away people “people who deserve to die”, accompanied by oddball teenager Roxy (Tara Lynn Barr).

The first half-hour of God Bless America is both hilarious and spot-on (even if the targets are a little obvious) and the audience is entirely complicit in the non-PC fun.  The movie seems to run out of steam a little after that, and is repetitive at the end when Frank and Roxy get their 15 minutes of fame before bowing out, as we know they must, like Bonnie and Clyde (or should that be Butch and Sundance?).  A guilty but substantial pleasure.

And now, a parenthetical observation to the woman sitting in the fourth row of the Midnight Madness screening I attended at TIFF2011, who applauded as loudly as anyone when Frank and Roxy execute the teens who had been ruining their enjoyment of a movie – and who then, without any apparent ironic self-awareness, stood up for the best part of 25 minutes, noisily and frenetically photographing the director and stars during the post-film Q&A, even after the guy behind her asked her to sit down.  God Bless North America.