AMERICAN DREAMZ
Director: Paul Weitz Stars: Hugh Grant, Dennis Quaid, Mandy Moore, Willem Dafoe, Chris Klein, Marcia Gay Harden, Jennifer Coolidge
Reviewed by GREG KING
Writer/director Paul Weitz is probably best known for the deliberately gross out adolescent humour of the American Pie series. But Weitz has also shown that he is capable of more mature, thoughtful and engaging comedies with About A Boy and In Good Company.
For his latest film American Dreamz, Weitz has brought together the two stars of those films - Hugh Grant and Dennis Quaid - as well as two veterans of the American Pie series in Chris Klein and Stiffler’s mum Jennifer Coolidge.
Quaid plays Joe Staton, the recently re-elected President of the United States, who has become depressed and withdrawn from all public appearances and engagements, much to the chagrin of his chief adviser (Willem Dafoe, looking like a cross between Vice President Dick Cheney and Australian Prime Minister John Howard). To counter rumours of a nervous breakdown and to restore his falling popularity, the President is talked into becoming a guest judge on the final episode of American Dreamz, the top rating talent quest show on tv.
Grant plays the narcissistic, sarcastic host and chief judge of American Dreamz, and, on a weekly basis, he verbally eviscerates a legion of desperate wannabes and aspiring starlets. Amongst the hopeful future stars on this season of the show are Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore), a ruthlessly ambitious karaoke singer from a dead end town in Ohio who exploits her sexuality to get ahead, and Omer (Sam Golzari), a failed terrorist with a penchant for show tunes. When he looks certain to make the grand final, Omer is approached by hard-line Islamic terrorists who want him to martyr himself by blowing up the President on national television.
This combination of satire on vacuous reality tv talent shows, the hypocrisy of politics, and international terrorism makes for an ambitious if uneasy mix. Thankfully, potentially cringe-worthy moments are kept to a minimum. There are many funny moments throughout, and most of the best jokes come at the expense of the terrorists. American Dreamz takes a broad swipe at several important and highly recogniseable targets, and while it doesn’t score a direct hit, it is still quite funny. The satire remains quite broad, but somehow the film doesn’t seem quite sharp enough.
***
Reviewed by PETER MALONE
This is a topical comedy, not so much a laughing out loud comedy, but one that provides a fairly constant smile.
However, a word of warning is required – not because of language or other difficulties since there is very little of these that would upset. Rather, it is the topics of the comedy: politics, the media, American foreign policy and the actions of international terrorists. Topical comedy has to tread rather warily as there is the potential to offend some political beliefs and allegiances.
On the other hand, there is a strong tradition of political satire in the UK, less so in the US, so it is surprising to find Americans sending themselves up. The hint is given in the Z in Dreamz. American Dreamz is the equivalent of the extremely popular TV talent (and lack of talent) show, American Idol with international variations in Pop Idol. Obviously, this is an easy target for parody.
What makes the film different is that, in the aftermath of his re-election, President Staton of the US (Dennis Quaid), is weary, a touch depressed and avoiding contact with people, much to the chagrin of his chief advisor (a bald Willem Dafoe who keeps reminding us of Vice President Dick Cheney) and his supportive wife (Marcia Gay Harden).
The president is reduced to doing something he has never done before: reading the papers, even the Canadian papers, and he is discovering all kinds of information about Shi'ites and Sunnis and Iraq that had never registered before! You can see where this kind of satire is going and Dennis Quaid does a good but fairly benign parody of President Bush and his reliance on his advisors. But, to push his ratings, the president is to be a judge on American Dreamz.
In the meantime we are treated to a more barbed treatment of the completely cynical and self-centred host of the show. Who else but Hugh Grant continuing his line of ever more surface charming, depth-loathsome characters. Grant is a past master of this kind of sarcastic, blunt and devious character (and probably modelled his performance on some real personalities). His assistants play up to him. Contestants try to manipulate him. But, he controls everything.
The two principal contestants are Mandy Moore as an Ohio girl who seems to have fewer scruples than the compere – and we see where she ends up. She has a show business mother (Jennifer Coolidge) and the simplest of dopey American boyfriends (Chris Klein is very persuasive) who, disappointed in love, enlists for Iraq and is wounded. While his character seems a foil to the others, he is the key to the film’s ending: nothing is real unless it is on TV, whether the talk show personal revelations or events of violence (and the camera has to keep rolling).
But, it is the other contestant who will raise the eyebrows, a terrorist recruit who is terrible at military training but loves Broadway songs and who, by a series of accidents, finds himself a finalist and on a mission to destroy the president. The jokes at the expense of the terrorists are amusing, though terrorists themselves may not find them so.
Satire is not everyone’s cup of comedy, especially if one identifies with the targets of the humour. (It will be interesting to see how American Dreamz goes down at the US box-office.) Satirists are often angry at society and attack what they see wrong with it. They also tend to be strong moralists who have an idea of how a perfect society ought to be and so are able to mock what they see is wrong.
Writer-director Paul Weitz (About a Boy, In Good Company) hits, but does not hit too hard – just enough to alert us, with a smile, to some of the political and media stupidities of our time.