This is the entire premise of God Bless America, prompting middle-aged fathers around the world to high five each other in glee now that they can at least somewhat experience their fantasy for 90 minutes. Also he’s joined by a random, cute, teenage girl along the way, giving that extra bit of strength to the high five.
God Bless America definitely has some hilarious moments, and the first half hour or so is filled with clever parody – American Idol, My Super Sweet Sixteenth and even Bill O’Reilly are all criticised and exaggerated (a ‘lady’ throws a used tampon at another woman in the house after she took a shit in her food in a satire of The Real Housewives). The character development of Frank is swift and contains all the factors needed for the audience to root for him: his neighbours are loud and rude, he unjustly loses his job, then he finds out he has a brain tumour.
It is really fun watching him transform from a chump who has probably just copped shit his entire life into a take-no-prisoners, fuck-you assassin of brats, whinges and arseholes. Almost everybody has at least once uttered the off-the-record expression, “God what I would do to kill [annoying person]”. Thus, the dark premise of the film is easily relatable, but therein lies its flaw. Everybody would like to kill celebrities like Kim Kardashian, but nobody does so because the consequences are jail-time, likely loss of family and friends, and then you have to write a book about it when you get out. Therefore, when you initially witness Frank’s first murder, you cheer as he lives out what you’ve dreamed of doing, but as the story progresses and he falls down into a trap of continuous evil, you cringe because the fantasy is destroyed: its clear his life has changed for the worse, and it’s no longer funny.
People who talk in cinemas are frustrating, but do they deserve to die? Obviously the film is designed to exaggerate, but the homicidal characters start off as likeable with Frank’s murder of a rude, unappreciative upper-class teenage brat, but they soon become unlikeable once they grow into their roles as absolute moralists that murder even for trivial behaviours. Of course that’s the whole point of the film, the killing of disrespectful and irritating people in our society, but the tone of the murders unfortunately leans towards moralism rather than humour. The film would’ve greatly benefitted from adding a touch of light comedy to these scenes to complement its overall black humour and plot.
