Movie Review: AMERICAN DREAMZ (2006)

Tweet

RSSS

Tweet

American Dreamz (2006)–**

American Dreamz is accessible satire. It reflects, but doesn’t challenge. It entertains, but doesn’t illuminate. Sure, it’s not entirely designed for the American Idol audience, but the sentimentality that creeps in on some of the characters certainly reeks of what the an agent in the film calls “good television.”

The film heads in the right direction some of the time, lampooning contemporary Presidential politics, superstardom, and the terror state, but there are significant turns off course. I guess I can say it best when I say writer/director Paul Weitz just isn’t suited for satire.

He hosts the biggest show on television, but Martin Tweed (Hugh Grant) isn’t happy. He’s the most powerful man in the world, but President Jim Station (Dennis Quaid) isn’t happy. He’s training to be a terrorist to avenge the death of his mother at the hands of an American bomb, but Omer (Sam Golzari) just isn’t happy.

In attempt to spice up his singing talent show American Dreamz, Tweed looks for a twist. He begrudgingly enters the No. 1 show’s newest season, sick of the usual blonde girls next door like contestant Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore). Instead, Tweed wants a Jew and an Arab on the list, with recent immigrant Omer, who has a penchant for showtunes, fitting the bill perfectly. To top it off, President Station’s Chief of Staff (Willem Dafoe), wants the reclusive president to make an appearance on the show.

As the President, Tweed and Omer all look to break free of the problems that are bringing them down, the problems are about to get bigger. Omer is selected by his former comrades to be a suicide bomber who will blow up President Station on the season finale of Tweed’s American Dreamz.

The general idea of American Dreamz has shades of brilliant satire, but unlike Network or Dr. Strangelove or even Spike Lee’s Bamboozled, Weitz’s film doesn’t have the outrageous stranglehold on its subject matter that is necessary to make the film shocking. Short of a teenager having sex with a pie, Weitz has never really been able to make his films shocking, let alone as biting as American Dreamz should have been.

In truth, American Dreamz doesn’t even feel like satire. It looks and sounds like satire, with brief, but dull swipes at SUVs and Iraq. Unfortunately, its lack of written intensity is underscored by across the board miscasting and complete disregard for a coherent idea. American Dreamz is plagued by an urge to layer the characters with shallow sentimentality while still trying to produce a comedy of sorts. Hugh Grant, Chris Klein and Mandy Moore simply clash with Seth Green, Jennifer Coolidge and, surprisingly, Willem Dafoe.

Maybe I expected too much out of American Dreamz. I admittedly had high hopes with Weitz at the helm and a week’s worth of Time Warner Cable On-Demand viewing of Lumet’s Networkstill fresh in my head. Network, however, is what American Dreamz should have aspired to be. With George W. Bush as President and American Idol dominating pop culture, it’s not as if there was a lack of fruitful territory. When a film is just a limping comedy that exists in the world I just mentioned, even though all the time it could have taken serious aim at it, it doesn’t much feel like a successful cinematic outing for the audience or for Weitz.