Posted: 03/26/2006

American Dreamz

(2006)

by Michael Jones

In the “Behind The Scenes” featurette for About a Boy, Hugh Grant—who’s role in the feature is to make some sort of fawning praise about the directorial genius of Paul Weitz—comments that he was astounded that…Paul is a voracious reader of weighty subjects and can often seen with a book on the set of the film. It’s meant to be flattering, but comes off as backhanded. As though he (and the audience) expected the director of American Pie to be holding a 40 oz, in one hand, his penis in the other, while resting the most recent issue of Maxim wedged between the folds of his beer gut. Yes, Mr. Weitz is literate and capable of more mature films, as evidenced by In the “Behind The Scenes” featurette for About a Boy, Hugh Grant—who’s role in the feature is to make some sort of fawning praise about the directorial genius of Paul Weitz—comments that he was astounded that…Paul is a voracious reader of weighty subjects and can often seen with a book on the set of the film. It’s meant to be flattering, but comes off as backhanded. As though he (and the audience) expected the director of American Pie to be holding a 40 oz, in one hand, his penis in the other, while resting the most recent issue of Maxim wedged between the folds of his beer gut. Yes, Mr. Weitz is literate and capable of more mature films, as evidenced by his helming Boy and last year’s dramedy, In Good Company. However, there’s a large chasm between reading a lot and being well read. The director’s stab at social commentary, American Dreamz, is further proof of this.

Set as a comically critical look at this country’s social and political surroundings, Dreamz follows the lives of the show’s self-hating British host (Grant), a vacant puppet of a Southern President (Dennis Quaid), a back-stabbing aspiring superstar (Mandy Moore) and a show tunes-obsessed Arab terrorist (Sam Golzari) who’s sent to explode the President once it’s learned that the terrorist is a contestant and the President a guest judge. Tangles in the plot are the girl’s clueless soldier boyfriend (Chris Klein), the freedom fighter’s flamboyant cousin (Tony Yalda) and the President’s puppeteer (Willem Defoe) who looks likes (gasp) Dick Cheney.

During some of the film’s pre-release interviews, Weitz hoped that people would look at it as a comedy first and a satire second. And despite its subject matter, I agree that American Dreamz should not be seen as a satire. It’s not smart enough to be one. Like an unfunny Saturday Night Live sketch, American Dreamz offers little more than celebrity impressions and two hours of smart-ass commentary which is comprises of about one-tenths “smart” and nine-tenths “ass.” The problem with Weitz’s observations is that we already know the absurdity of our society. Yes, the president’s administration is myopic when it comes to foreign policy. Yes, American Idol is nothing more than a weekly visit to a karaoke bar without the drunken Japanese businessmen. People have reconciled themselves with these facts since 2001 (and again in 2004). The point of good comedic satire is to make the audience look at the skewed world through a funhouse mirror. Dreamz is a mirror that’s neither skewed nor fun.

This can best be seen through Quaid’s character, a President who begins experiencing pangs of intelligent analysis once he actually reads a newspaper. Even the most ardent of Bush backers have conceded the point that he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, and if Weitz were a more cunning writer, he could have conjured one more than one joke than the president is an illiterate imbecile. Instead, he makes him earnest and noble—like a Forrest Gump without the bullet in his ass, and nothing more than that.

Which leaves us to the principal performances of Grant and Moore, who play the roles they should be suited for since they’ve lived the lives of their characters. Grant plays a wildly popular Englishman whose claim to fame is that he’s very, very talented at being very, very British. Moore, meanwhile, probably took the role because it appears brave to skewer the very machine that launched her career. But with Weitz’s writing, the only insight we get from her is that she’s unhappy in her young life’s direction—something one could pick up from the news stories about every single pop singer since 1997. That’s not witty. That’s just redundant.

There are a couple of bright spots. Golzari’s Omar, a confused young man whose love for his mother leads to both the reasons he loves America (she endowed upon him a love of Broadway songs) and the reason he hates it (she was bombed). Golzari doesn’t play him to be a complete moron and his rise to the top of the show counters nicely against Moore’s ascendance. The second is Weitz’s non-comedic writing, which displays an unusual tenderness whenever any two characters get the chance to be alone on-screen. A better chance at both satire and film success would have been to just focus on the chemistry between Grant’s and Moore’s character, a burgeoning romance fueled by their self-awareness of why they loathe themselves and the world. Weitz has the capacity to write/direct the types of romantic dramedies that Cameron Crowe used to do before Vanilla Sky—sweet stories which don’t dissolve into saccharine. Hopefully one day, he’ll start punching his weight.

Michael Jones is a film critic in San Francisco.

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