GOD BLESS AMERICA

GOD BLESS AMERICA is irreverent comedian Bobcat Goldthwait’s dark, hateful on everything and everyone in America that grates on his nerves, from America’s celebrity culture to “Mormons and other religious [expletive deleted] who won’t let gay people get married.”

In the story, a middle-aged, divorced office drone named Frank learns that, not only does he have terminal cancer, but that his young daughter no longer wants to visit him. At work, he has to listen to his co-workers chatter inanely about last night’s insipid TV program. The current favorite is a fictional AMERICAN IDOL show where an arrogant man with an English accent (ala Simon Cowell) insults a young Asian man who can’t sing. Frank imagines shooting his co-workers, but instead starts insulting them and gets fired.

Despondent, Frank tries to see his daughter, but she seems almost as selfish as a bratty teenage girl on Reality TV he happens to see while flipping through the channels. Frank decides to kill the young TV brat, who’s driving her permissive parents crazy. He does the deed, but one of the brat’s school classmates, Roxy, sees Frank do it.

Roxy follows Frank to his hotel room and stops him from committing suicide. She chastises Frank that, if he kills himself, the vapid TV newscasters will just claim that Frank was “some creepy old stalker dude” who was in love with the young TV star. Frank says he only killed the girl “because she wasn’t nice.”

Roxy suggests to Frank there are plenty of other mean and stupid people who deserve killing, like people who high-five one another, the writer of the movie JUNO, fans of the TWILIGHT movies, or religious people who don’t support same-sex marriage. So, she and Frank go on a killing spree. Among the victims are some young people who text and talk in a movie theater during an Anti-Vietnam War documentary Frank and Roxy are watching. Frank and Roxy also decide that the parents of the selfish, greedy teenage girl on TV are partly responsible for raising such a brat, so they also shoot them dead. Another victim is a conservative talk show host whom Frank thinks spreads “lies, fear, and hate.”

At one point during their cross-country killing spree, they visit Time Square in New York, and Frank wishes he had an AK-47 with him. At another point, Frank says, “America has become a cruel and vicious place. We reward the shallowest, the meanest, and the loudest. We no longer have any common sense of decency. No sense of shame. There is no right or wrong. The worst qualities in people are looked up to and celebrated. Lying and spreading fear is fine as long as you make money doing it. . . . We’ve lost our kindness.”

The episodic story comes to a climax during the finale of the fictional AMERICAN IDOL show. At the show, Frank is further enraged that the Simon Cowell character will get one more chance to ridicule the bad Asian singer. This leads to the movie’s ultra-violent ending.

Besides killing people who annoy them or who they don’t like, the lead characters in GOD BLESS AMERICA have no real goal. The movie’s creator, Bobcat Goldthwait just uses them to vent his anger against all the things and people in modern day America he himself hates. Some of the venting is funny, and perhaps even well deserved. However, it’s not really consistent. For instance, although Frank attacks the mean nature of much of today’s popular culture, it’s a pretty mean thing in itself to start killing people merely for their verbal assaults and non-violent, albeit cruel, insults against other people.

The other problem with GOD BLESS AMERICA is its left wing, humanist political correctness. At the same time Frank rails against the lack of shame and the lack of right and wrong, he agrees with Roxy’s hatred against religious people (i.e., Mormons and Christians) “who won’t let gay people get married.” Also, for example, the scenes about the conservative talk show host are clearly meant to be a slam against both Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, but these scenes are such a simplistic ad hominem attack that they’re not really based on reality. Once again, a godless, left leaning, somewhat libertarian, self-appointed pundit (aka Bobcat Goldthwait) spits out false, ignorant, hypocritical bile against his supposed enemies. Apparently, Bobcat hates people who spread lies and fear, but that’s exactly what he’s doing against conservative pundits and people of faith.

Here, it’s also important to note that, at the same time the movie’s protagonist complains that there’s no sense of shame or right and wrong anymore, the movie also contains lots of obscene language. In contrast to this, Christians and conservatives should note to our mean-spirited leftist and atheist friends that the same Bible that condemns cruelty, hatred, slander, and violence against the innocent is the same Bible that condemns homosexual behavior and obscene talk. It’s also the same Bible that defines marriage as a special and sacred (or holy) unbreakable relationship between one man and one woman.

GOD BLESS AMERICA is an abhorrent, obscene, hateful, ultra-violent diatribe containing politically correct rage and some Anti-Christian bigotry. Like other, similar movies created by leftist, atheist fanatics, it’s a dangerous movie that likely will inspire a few people to copy the violent actions of its misguided protagonists. Sadly, that will be even more true because the creator and actors use comedy and satire, which probably will make their despicable story more attractive to people, including the teenagers and young adults most likely to commit violent copycat crimes.

Ultimately, we have to ask Bobcat Goldthwait at least one question. If American pop culture is truly so cruel and repugnant, why don’t you make an uplifting, non-violent, clean comedy celebrating kindness, truth, beauty, humility, joy, purity, and self-control? Or, is that too rational for you to comprehend?