American Dreamz

Since bursting onto the scene in 1999 with the original American Pie, writer-director Paul Weitz has proved that his main expertise is in developing flawed yet likeable characters that audiences could relate to in some way. Since then, he's dropped the teen raunch of his breakout film, and has brought us some sweet-natured winners such as About a Boy and In Good Company. With his latest film, American Dreamz, Weitz takes a complete turn around into dark comedic satire, and completely tosses everything that made his past films work to the wayside. Instead of being smart and wicked, he decides to play his humor broadly so that his characters resemble either walking stereotypes or overblown cartoon characters. While I do admire the film's gutsiness in a way, American Dreamz is an obnoxious and labored political farce.

With his music talent search TV show "American Dreamz" climbing the network ratings, the show's very Simon Cowell-inspired host, Martin Tweed (Hugh Grant) has grown tired of the usual wannabe superstars that flock to his show, and wants to look for some fresh and interesting talent. (Or "freaks" as he calls them.) He finds them in a seemingly-perky young woman with a cutthroat desire to win named Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore), a funky Hasidic (Adam Busch), and an Iraq immigrant named Omer who is living with U.S. relatives and has a passion for Broadway showtunes (Sam Golzari). Behind their squeaky-clean wannabe singing sensation exteriors, these contestants all have dark secrets of some kind. Sally plans to use her dim-witted Iraq war veteran boyfriend (Chris Klein) in order to boost her popularity with audiences, and as we learn in an earlier scene, Omer the Iraq immigrant is actually a member of a Terrorist Cell who has been sent to America to await orders from his superiors back home.

In a subplot, we find that the nation's lame-duck President, Joseph Staton (Dennis Quaid), is having a hard time keeping his popularity up with the people since being elected for a second term. He's recently just started reading what the newspapers are saying about him, and has since locked himself away in his room, not wanting to face the public. His Chief of Staff (William Dafoe made up to look like Dick Cheney) puts the President on an aggressive publicity campaign in order to boost his approval ratings, culminating in a spot as a guest judge on the season finale of the American Dreamz TV show. With the President in arm's reach, Omer's superiors plot to strap a bomb to the wannabe singer set to go off when Staton is close to him. Omer must now make a choice whether he wants to carry out the plan, or fulfill his true passion of being a star on the Great White Way.

What can you say about a movie where the most likeable and sympathetic character is a terrorist being forced to blow himself up in order to kill the President on live TV? The film's humor certainly aims for some very large targets, but perhaps Paul Weitz was setting his sights too high this time around. The movie plays everything so broad and so over the top that it stops resembling satire and begins to feel more like we are watching some kind of live action cartoon. This hurts the film, because in order for satire to work, there needs to be at least some sort of anchor in reality. We need to be able to identify with the humor and the situations. The situations may be familiar, but the screenplay is filled with so many blithering idiots and stereotypical gays and dumb blondes that we may as well be watching aliens attempting to portray us. The humor just isn't as sharp as it should be. It plays it too safe and often much too predictable. Instead of aiming for sharp laughs or wit, the movie asks us to laugh at the ignorance of most of its cast of characters. It's almost as if Weitz did not feel comfortable with his own material, and kept on holding himself back from truly trying to offend - a big mistake when writing political-themed satire.

More than that, the film is just not very funny, aside from a few sporadic laughs here and there. American Dreamz has a confused tone that constantly switches back and forth from broad stupid comedy aimed at teens to weak political humor aimed at adults. It doesn't know which audience to go for, and ends up failing on both levels. It doesn't even know how to successfully mock the actual American Idol show that inspired it. Whenever the movie shows us the "Dreamz" program, we sit and wonder how such a show could be popular. The singers portrayed are not in the least bit talented, and sadly, I don't think it was intentional sometimes. Even Mandy Moore, a professional singer turned actress, gives a boring performance whenever she's on stage. I know this is supposed to be a comedy and all, but I just find it hard to believe that this show and these contestants could be even remotely popular with anyone. Even when the contestants are supposed to be intentionally bad, we don't laugh, because the humor seems so forced and desperate. Instead of making such broad fools out of these people, having them be so blatantly and obviously bad, they should have had the contestants trying to be good but failing miserably. The jokes are not subtle in the least, and are so shockingly obvious that we are more embarrassed than amused.

The one and only saving grace is a generally game cast, most of whom have starred in Weitz's past films. Even though Dennis Quaid's President is supposed to be a Bush parody, he wisely does not play him as an imitation of the real thing. There's a certain sweetness behind his dim-bulb exterior that it's too bad the movie doesn't use him enough, opting instead to focus on the more unlikeable characters such as Moore's seemingly-sweet yet conniving Sally Kendoo. The other likeable performance comes from Sam Golzari as the half-hearted terrorist with dreams of stardom. He's probably the most fleshed out and honest character for most of the movie that it's a shame the movie decides to make him into a self-mockery during the later half of the movie when he's forced to perform some overly ridiculous routines on the TV show. The rest of the cast do what they can with their roles, but they are either so underwritten that they don't even seem to exist (Marcia Gay Harden as the First Lady), or they are so broad and intentionally stupid that we wonder why anyone would want to make a movie about them in the first place (Chris Klein's hapless performance as a war vet too stupid to realize his girlfriend is just using him to gain popularity is more depressing than funny.) And despite getting top billing, Hugh Grant gets surprisingly little screen time as the show's mean spirited and sarcastic host, and doesn't really get a chance to leave an impression. Yes, it's nice to see Grant in a different kind of role from what he usually plays, but writer-director Weitz already did that much better a couple years ago with About a Boy.

There's very little to get excited about while watching American Dreamz, despite the potential it holds if the script had been smarter and sharper. The movie seems like a big load of wasted potential that just sits there on the screen and idly wastes its time until the end credits start to roll. That's not to say there are some laughs to be had, but most of the big ones come near the end, which is far too late to salvage or make up for everything that came before it. I give Weitz and his crew credit for trying, but I can't muster up much more enthusiasm than that. If you're hungry for satire, I highly advise you seek out the much smarter Thank You For Smoking. Compared to that movie, American Dreamz just doesn't cut it.

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