First Hit: A poorly constructed story with very little character building and ultimately unsatisfying.
There are brief moments in this film that are funny. There are a couple dramatic moments that are captivating. But when filled with all the other scenes and edited together, it was a terrible 99 minutes.
This film barely holds itself together; actually maybe it didn’t. Robin Williams plays Lance Clayton a high school teacher who is a single father raising a high school son named Kyle Clayton (played by Daryl Sabara). Kyle goes to his father’s school, and says he hates everything. I mean everything except porno. Kyle loves internet porno and the film gives the impression she spends all his spare time masturbating, obsessing about sex or occasionally playing a video game with his quiet and thoughtful friend Andrew (played by Evan Martin).
Early on one gets a sense of where this film might, but doesn’t, go. It is the beginning scene when Lance goes to wake up his son for school and walks in on him masturbating while choking himself with a strap to enhance his orgasm.
It is an interesting way to begin a film, but the interaction and dialog fall flat and the film runs a mediocre course until Kyle dies by performing this same act. This unknown and hated kid all of a sudden becomes a beacon of light for all the other kids in school because of a counterfeit suicide note written by his father to hide how the boy really died.
There are other characters in the film, like Lance’s girlfriend coworker Claire (played by Alexie Gilmore) and coworker Jason (played by Jermaine Williams); however they add little to the story. The longer Lance continues to drive the fantasy about his son Kyle, the more his conscious gets the better of him and, in the end, he tells the truth. Didn't we all see this coming?
Bobcat Goldthwait wrote and directed this and I’ve got to say it probably sounded better on paper than the resulting film. I could almost see Williams try to embolden his role to have some meaning, but the script and direction didn’t allow for it. There is no character building therefore we have no idea why or how Sabara’s character developed into this sex obsessed hateful boy. We’re just dropped into this story and expected to believe him with no historical perspective or developmental storyline. It just didn’t work. Jermaine William’s character was only there to make Williams character jealous and it was either bad acting or scripting, but it didn’t work and he wasn’t believable. Gilmore was amusing to watch but seemed more like putting oil and vinegar salad dressing on a Jello mold salad – it didn’t work.
Overall: There were hints of a good and interesting idea for a film, but the execution sinks it after the first 15 minutes.