God Bless America

This is mostly satirical until the end, when it unaccountably gets too serious. Frank is an insurance executive who basically has no life. He spends his evenings zoned out on the couch watching the depths of depravity being mined by “reality” shows. Then he is fired, and told he has a brain tumor. He’s about to kill himself until he sees some of the excesses of a terrible family on TV, and decides it would be more fulfilling to kill them instead. Which he does.

He is joined by a teenage girl who is with him in his murderous ideas. You don’t have to approve of murder to be delighted with the people he kills. It’s all a joke, okay? But I was solidly behind him every time. I would have gunned down five Supreme Court justices after I got through cleaning up television … actually, before that. (Don’t read this, Homeland Security. It’s all daydreaming, okay? I don’t even own a gun.)

It’s written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwaite, who is renowned for his quirky and black sense of humor. It can’t sustain itself all the way to the end, but there was some fun stuff along the way.