Netflix Movie Monday (Tuesday)

Well, technically it's Tuesday but I had a fever yesterday evening/night, so I felt more like watching episodes of Criminal Minds than pounding on a keyboard. But Tuesday is better than never!

I've always enjoyed dark/black movies.  Maybe I'm in the minority and is why a lot of people hate my usual movie selection.  At least Vance Pounders and Justin Patterson enjoy a good movie!  But as you can guess, my pick this week is a dark comedy.  Not many people have seen it because it was released on a limited basis in the theaters.  But I heard some good things about it from a few people (well, message board people), and since it was on Netflix, I decided to watch World's Greatest Dad.

World's Greatest Dad stars Robin Williams, who I've always been a big fan of.  The movie is about a single dad/teacher/unpublished author (Lance Clayton) who is struggling at connecting with and raising his overly perverted/manipulative/moody teenage son, Kyle, who could very well be the evil twin of Napoleon Dynamite.  Kyle struggles in school, with academics and socially and the principal even suggests to Lance that his son may be better off in a special-needs school.  Well, that doesn't happen because his son dies in a freak accident.

To avoid the embarrassment of how his son really died, Lance stages the death to look like a suicide and also writes a fake suicide note. After the note is made public, all of the students in the school start to identify with and idolize Kyle.  Lance gets too caught up in the moment and also writes a fake diary that Kyle supposedly kept a secret.  After the diary does out, the legend of Kyle grows and he serves as an inspiration to everyone and develops a huge cult following.

His diary starts to obtain the interest of several book publishers, Lance is invited on national talk shows and the school library even gets named after Kyle.  But as always, I don't want to give away too many spoilers, so that's it for now.

Overall, I thought the movie was really funny (but it was funnier with Kyle) and it's definitely worth a viewing.  It does have a lot of middle school type humor and has a few vulgar moments, so it's not something you would want to watch with your mother.   And if it means anything, I didn't dare try to watch it with Mary in the room.