American Dreamz

28 October 2006. American Dreamz is likely to be one of the overlooked and dismissed of the most puzzling and mysterious movie productions of 2006. It is a fascinating, confusing blend of comedy, drama yet and while not always executed well, it actually evokes a bold and daring attempt at movie-making. Both the lead characters played by Hugh Grant and Mandy Moore are not our American picture perfect personalities that the audience can like. It's actually Dennis Quaid's role as President that actually forms the foundation of this movie as his character develops and grows throughout.

Interestingly enough, this movie is a hard-hitting, serious drama of the rough and hardened role of television competition as well as the political machinations of government. This is a strange little drama wrapped up in the vestments of a supposedly a comedy that actually isn't. It's a dark comedy. The combination of comedy and drama, the director's attempt to capture the difficult subject matter in a tasteful manner that wouldn't alienate the entire audience wasn't completely successful. Yet underlying all the chaos, at its core this movie really did contain and present a rather nasty core of humanity, of acknowledgement between peers, of movement forward. In other words, this movie capture a little bit of real humanity and brought the audience a little further into the connection between human beings. Seven out of Ten Stars.

Imagine a terrorist getting to the final round of an American Idol-type show so that he can bump off one of the judges - the President of the United States. Paul Weitz has a great and creative imagination to think up the plot of "American Dreamz," a 2006 comedy that he wrote and directed.

The premise is that the President of the U.S. (Dennis Quaid) is the puppet of his chief adviser (Willem Dafoe) and has to have an earpiece so he knows what to say. At the beginning of the film, he's reading newspapers and discovering that things in the world aren't quite as they've been described to him. So absorbed is he in this new knowledge, that he won't leave the residence, and rumors surface that he's had a nervous breakdown or is ill. So his Chief of Staff mounts a massive publicity campaign, and one of the things he does is arrange for the President to judge the "American Dreamz" talent contest. Hugh Grant is the Simon Cowell character who also hosts the show. He wants a Jew and an Arab to compete, plus someone really yummy (Mandy Moore).

An idiot terrorist, Iqbal Riza (Tony Yalda) is sent to the U.S. to get him out of the way, and he lives with his cousins. His goal in life is to be on American Dreamz. However, the day the Dreamz committee arrives in response to his tape, his terrorist cousin Omer (Sam Golzali) is in his stage/basement setup doing a song from Guys and Dolls. He's scooped up for American Dreamz, which makes Iqbal a) furious and b) his choreographer. The terrorist bosses devise a bomb that Omer will retrieve in the mens room to kill himself and the President - but he has to get to the final round.

This comedy is truly outrageous. I just wish we could have seen a few more numbers from Omer and his cousin - for me, the competition just made the movie. In my opinion also, it would have been funnier if the Mandy Moore character of Sally Kendoo had been below par - she actually was pretty good. When Omer went into "The Impossible Dream" and one of the terrorists criticizes the choice of song to his fellow cell members, it was hilarious.

It is incredibly nervy to show terrorists assembling pieces of a bomb for Omer to put together and juxtapose it with a mindless competition - nervy because it's the old Hitchcock terror in normal places idea that is scary indeed.

After all Omer has been told about the evils in America, it must seem like a pretty silly place to him - but tempting - and he goes after the American Dream on American Dreamz. Sally Kendoo, looking for all the world like an innocent hometown girl, is anything but, as ruthless as they come, even taking advantage of an Iraqui vet she doesn't love to pull in audience votes. Grant is appropriately sleazy as Martin Tweed, Quaid good as an out of it President just finding his own voice, and Marcia Gay Harden has a small but colorful role as the First Lady.

Most of the characters are sketchy and not likable - except for Omer and his cousin, who are a riot. If only real young terrorists were the way these two are depicted.

Perhaps this film has gotten mixed reviews because it breaks an unwritten code about how far a movie can go in satirizing America's myths. When before have we seen the President of the United States on happy pills and robotic-ally pro- gram-med by his Rovelike handlers ? Who would suggest that an Al-Quaeda training camp could be funny and that someone in it has up scale all-American relatives in Orange County, California ? Could our love affair with American Idol be an escape from the collapsing American middle class way of life ?

This film IS often funny but it doesn't want that humor to stay in a feel good zone. It WANTS to make us uncomfortable and to face things that we don't want to look at too closely. The "sin" that this film has committed is that it wants us to grow up.

This smart satire about current issues and trends (the Iraq war, reality shows and all that jazz) is one of those sleepers that become cult movies 10 or 20 years after its original release. With an inspired cast that includes Hugh Grant as a cynical, vain TV show host (what were you expectin'?), Dennis Quaid as a dumb president who admires Carmen Electra and needs his chief of staff to think for him all the time (any similarity to real characters is no coincidence), Marcia Gay Harden as the first lady, Willem Dafoe as the chief of staff, and Mandy Moore as a talentless bitch (not even Moore could ruin it - this is, alongside another underrated satire, "Saved!", one of her least crappy performances, perhaps because she's kind of playing herself), and some very quotable lines, the movie tastes like a fast-food Monty Python - witty in spite of all the nonsense. "American Dreamz" may not have a memorable character like, say, Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat", but it's just as corrosive. Too bad it didn't get the attention it deserved when it came out. Do yourself a favor and go rent it. 7.5/10.

When I was reading the other people's opinion's on American Dreamz, I wondered if they even realized it was a satire...? I surely hope that all who watched it even knows what a satire is: It is when you mock people and their doings/obsessions with the hope of improvement. In this movie, the director (Paul Weitz) mocks everything from America's obsession with TV-shows like Idols to George W. Bush and his delectable office. This is surely a movie you would want to watch a couple of times over - just to catch that dreary bit you most certainly missed the first time.

I would give this movie a well deserved 8 out of ten.