World's Greatest Dad (Blu-ray) (2009)

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General		Extras
Category	Comedy	Main Menu Audio & Animation Gallery-Photo Featurette-Behind The Scenes Music Video Deleted Scenes Outtakes
Rating
Year Of Production	2009
Running Time	98:34 (Case: 97)
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Bobcat Goldthwait
Studio Distributor	Eagle Entertainment	Starring	Robin Williams Daryl Sabara Morgan Murphy Naomi Glick Dan Spencer Geoff Pierson Henry Simmons
Case	Standard Blu-ray
RPI	$29.95	Music	Gerald Brunskill

     Many will remember Bobcat Goldthwait as the guy with the annoying and high-pitched raspy voice from some of the Police Academy movies back in the 1980s. More recently he has begun to focus on a career as a writer/director, having now made two features, Sleeping Dogs Lie and this one, World's Greatest Dad. Both films certainly challenge their audiences especially with their frank discussion of what many will consider to be sexual activities outside the bounds of good taste. This one, although still being an indie, has a higher profile due to the lead role being filled by Robin Williams. This film also adds the theme of teenage suicide to what becomes a quite rich potential mix of topics for (very) black humour and/or for offending people.

     The story focuses on unpopular high school poetry teacher, Lance Clayton (Robin Williams), who is also a struggling writer. He continues to submit his writing to publishers despite constant rejection. His misery is compounded by his teenage son, Kyle (Daryl Sabara, best known as Juni Cortez from the Spy Kids franchise) who is loathsome in the extreme. He treats his father with derision, has one friend and talks constantly about perverted sexual acts. He is disliked or actively hated by everyone and spends most of his spare time masturbating. He manages to kill himself while performing a sex act on his own and his father decides to make it appear to be suicide and fabricates a suicide note. When the suicide note gets published, Kyle becomes an overnight hero based on the words in his note. The only other major character is Claire (Alexie Gilmore) who is the art teacher at the same high school as Lance. They have been having an affair, however Claire seems very reluctant to admit it publicly.

     At the heart of this film is a very interesting idea, actually quite bold for a comedy; however the execution lets it down somewhat despite an impressive performance from Robin Williams. To my mind, Bobcat needed a collaborator on this film, maybe someone to help hone the script and possibly a more experienced director to really carry off the difficult subject matter for a comedy. Also, I felt that the Kyle character was too over the top and that the part of the film before his death took too long and would have benefited from his character coming to his sticky end earlier. The film improves once his pivotal death occurs as Lance needs to decide how to deal with his death and its aftermath. Regardless, there are amusing moments and strong social commentary about the pitfalls of taking advantage of other's misfortunes and the capacity of people to remember others very differently once they die.

     This is certainly not a film for the prudish and some people will not make it through this film if they stumble across it in the video store thinking it is a 'normal' Robin Williams comedy vehicle.

Video

     The video quality is quite good, but nothing special for Blu-ray.

     The feature is presented in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio which is the original aspect ratio. It is encoded using the AVC codec.

     The picture was quite clear and sharp throughout. There were a few scenes near the start of the film where fast motion was accompanied by what appeared to be compression artefacts. These were not major but slightly surprising on a Blu-ray.

     The colour was quite good but seemed somewhat pale, especially faces. This may be a function of the source material.

     There were no other noticeable artefacts.

     There are no subtitles.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

     The audio quality is good but not up to the best Blu-ray can offer. This Blu-ray contains two audio options, a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 soundtrack and an English Dolby Digital 5.1 surround soundtrack. The DTS-MA is definitely the pick of the two but neither is overly exciting.

     Dialogue was very clear and easy to understand at all times.

     The music mostly consists of various pop and rock songs, the most famous of which is Under Pressure by Queen & David Bowie. As you would expect the music sounds wonderful but sometimes is overused in the film.

     The surround speakers added very little to the sound mix, just a little music. The subwoofer was well used for music but little else.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

     A decent selection of extras but all in SD.

Menu

     The menu included motion and music.

Image Gallery

     40 or so stills from the film and behind the scenes shots showing many of Bobcat's hat collection.

Behind the Scenes (18:52)

     A quite interesting but overlong making of/behind the scenes featurette which at least doesn't stick to the standard Hollywood format for these things. There is discussion of the themes, Robin Williams doing some silly interview responses and other bits and pieces with the cast and crew. Better than average

Music Video - I Hope I Become A Ghost by Deadly Syndrome (4:12)

     Uninspiring video for the theme song of the movie.

Deleted Scenes (4:02)

     A bit more sexual perversion for those who didn't get enough in the movie. Some interesting scenes though.

Outtakes (1:52)

     Snore.

Trailer

     Other Eagle releases.

     The Region A Blu-ray release of this movie includes the follow extra items

• Commentary by Bobcat Goldthwait
• Subtitles
• BD Live
• HDNet - A Look at World's Greatest Dad (HD)

    The Region B release has the following in addition to the Region A version

• Extra Dolby Digital Track
• Image Gallery

        On this basis, the Region A seems to be the better choice.

     A very black comedy about sexual perversion and teen suicide.

     The video quality is quite good. The audio quality is good. A small selection of extras is included.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall