Posted: 03/26/2006

American Dreamz

(2006)

by Karen Petruska

American Dreamz is a typical Hollywood movie: overstuffed with actors and plotting, and not quite as smart as it thinks it is. Featuring an overdue satire of “American Idol,” the film simply tries to do too much at one time. In just two hours, the film mocks the most popular show on television, our nation’s president and vice president, the war on terror, religion, and, well, the American Dream. That’s a lot to ask from a 500-page novel, much less a two-hour film.

Written and directed by Paul Weitz (past credits include In Good Company and About a Boy), the movie features Hugh Grant as Martin Tweed, a combination of Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest, host and mastermind of talent show American Dreamz. Grant is so good at playing self-serving and amoral that you almost forget he made his career being a sappy lover. Similarly superficial is wannabe star Sally Kendoo (the always delightful Mandy Moore), who finds her equal in Tweed.

Sally’s blatant opportunism provides the occasional laugh, but Weitz doesn’t take her character far enough. Rather than exaggerate her character to the greatest extent (a la Tracy Flick in Election), Weitz imbues Sally with brief moments of remorse. These moments are so quick and disingenuous that they do little to develop her character, instead detracting from the humor of her lust for fame. Her pairing with Tweed too often gets bogged down in philosophical talk instead of vicious (and funny) plotting.

With comedic satire, characters can be one-dimensional, but in American Dreamz, they are cartoonish and dumb. Dennis Quaid’s President Staton is a patsy, controlled by his Chief of Staff (Willem Dafoe—even more hammy as a Cheney stand-in here than in his scenery chewing turn as the Green Goblin in Spider-Man). Staton decides he wants to learn about the world, so he starts to read the newspaper. Get it? That’s a dig at our president. Clever, huh? Quaid’s natural charm disappears entirely in this film as he sleepwalks through the movie. Sam Golzari does his best as Omer, a wannabe Afghan terrorist who accidentally becomes a contestant on American Dreamz, but his story line is so devoid of tension that I found myself caring little about whether he makes a murderous decision at the climax of the film.

Perhaps even more problematic, Weitz doesn’t seem to get why “American Idol” is so popular in the first place. Why does America love this show? Perhaps because deep down we want to believe that from humble origins we can all magically (and easily) become famous. A satire of this show doesn’t need all this extra political baggage, but it does necessitate a satire of the audience at home who buys into this fantasy. Though Weitz occasionally taps into this, especially through the unabashed pandering of Sally’s agent (played with panache by “Saturday Night Live” alum Seth Meyers), he obscures the parody with convoluted plotting and lazy pacing.

Karen Petruska is a film critic living in Chicago.

Got a problem? E-mail us at filmmonthly@gmail.com