God Bless America

This movie is great,intelligent,funny at times,saddening at other times.

Acting by Joel Murray was brilliant.I don't recognize Ms Tara Lynne Barr but I predict for her a bright full acting career.

The movie asks why American people turned into aggressive,mean,unrelenting,hellbent on hurting others creatures.

And why American children became ill-behaved,spoiled,nightmare begins.

It may force to think about things in live,or it may not.it all depends on your character,your way of life.

But believe me,you should watch that movie.

Written and directed by American comedian Bobcat Goldthwait comes this tale of Frank (Joel Murray), a downtrodden sad sack of a man whose miserable and lonely existence away from an estranged wife and daughter is accompanied by insomnia, noisy neighbours, reality television in all it's most evil manifestations and an ever increasing lack of patience. After losing his job and discovering he has an inoperable brain tumour, Frank decides he's had enough of the ignorance and general lack of moral principles he sees permeating through everyday American life and sets about directly addressing the problem…with a gun. Aside from the overly graphic and wanton violence, this is a film with a lot to say. It's almost as if writer Goldthwait is himself getting stuff off his chest that's been festering for years. Much of the dialogue is indeed bitingly funny, including some incisive rants about the pernicious nature of American Idol type singing competitions. The film does sometimes forget itself (one holiday montage sequence seems a loose fit) and some of the murders which Frank and his willing side-kick Roxy (Tara Lynn Page) carry out might threaten to cancel out the more intelligent aspects of the message for some. What is certain is that God Bless America will divide opinion. Frank's a walking contradiction, a liberal man who fights his cause with right-wing methods to find a stage to air his liberal views. This is a film for everyone who's imagined but would never carry out. For those who want to instantly silence that barking dog down the street that's preventing valuable sleep before that big presentation at work the next day. It's for those of us who sit silently in cinema seats respecting other people's right to enjoy the experience only to have ignoramus's gibbering on mobile phones or kicking the back of your seat. While the film might draw criticism for it's depictions and excessive"preachiness", i found it agreeably acerbic. I wonder if Simon Cowell feels the same way.

I loved this movie. This is "The One" Feel-Good movie I've been missing since long time.

Each day and night after work or watching world and local TV news if you start feeling frustration because of stupidity of people, politicians, dictators, and pointless empty TV shows like the ones in this movie, you need something to calm yourself down.

This is a movie that takes all those rage and poison out of your mind and make you sleep well at night.

It is as satisfying as playing Doom in God Mode, just to shoot those Evils with that Shotgun or your shiny BFG9000, after those long, long meetings with stupid PowerPoint slide readers!

It is as satisfying as a long run in Castle Wolfenstein, bringing down those Nazis shouting Achtung, one by one, after a long night working after hours ... again!

It is as satisfying as scratching and slowly removing that crust off your healing wound. It hurts, tingles and your mind says stop, but you continue playing with it because feels so good!

This movie is like Daily Show on steroids! Take this movie as a medication to your frustrations and calm down.

Instead, I liked it and would gladly watch it again. God Bless America had so much potential. Its first half an hour or so goes as you expect, over the top dark humor with non-stop truth hitting relentless social commentary and then...Roxy walks into the movie. From this point on, unfortunately, without saying much, the movie falls into several paradoxes and loses its focus.

At its core, GBA is a good social satire with nonstop commentary on the problems with pop culture and society, but on the same coin, the movie tries so hard that it feels like a rant by an angry liberal rather the good satire it initially set out to be. Furthermore, Roxy becomes one of the characters you want dead as the movie goes and her character, along with her and Frank's relationship, appears so idealized and forced, that it just affects the movie for the rest of its running time.

The good, however, lies in the great shooting scenes, some of the great commentary made by Frank (most of what Roxy says makes you roll your eyes if not question what in the world the movie was going for), the dark humor, the targets for satire, the over the top story, its entertainment, and overall its a solid 9/10 movie but...

The bad lies in the second act, on Roxy's faulty and forced character, its endless rants between our two main character that makes you want them to kill themselves as the next person on their killing spree, the people targeted (whats wrong with high fives and country music? When did this movie become about taste rather than appropriate satire part?) and so on...it just bit itself in the tail.

I really wanted to love this movie. I almost did. Instead every time I went to smile and applaud the commentary, something matter of taste or the character discontinuity got in the way...good movie, definitely one everyone should watch, but sadly, for what it could have been and set out to be, very flawed.

What a great movie. It's rather as if Goldthwait has made an answer to Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers by way of Mike Judge's Office Space. Through the eyes of Joel Murray's Frank, we see a variety of society's ills and thankfully, Goldthwait doesn't dwell on them. To do so would be like gawking at the stupidity when you walk into a Walmart; it's just going to make you dwell longer at the stupidity on display, and you are still in a Walmart.

Instead, we get one of those movies that you either are along with or you aren't, you get or you don't. If you get it, you wish that Frank had a few more monologues, if you don't, you'd think it was advocating random shooting sprees.

Thankfully the script and Murray's brilliant portrayal of Frank has him as a principled, moral character who has his suicide interrupted by one terrible reality TV show too many. Along the way he teams up with a psychotic schoolgirl. He's rebelling violently about what society has become, she's rebelling against what society is.

It isn't a huge film, without a large budget, but well made. I felt that it worked best compared to Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, which showed spree killers as celebrities. In God Bless America the characters lament that they haven't even made the news. But in the end, Stone's film glories this shallow quest for fame while Goldthwait's film answers it, showing what happens to America when everyone is unkindly reaching for it.