God Bless America (2011)

Joel Murray and Tara Lynne Barr play a pair of my new favorite anti-heroes in the most deliciously gratifying film of 2011. In a mad, mad, mad world, these two head out on a Bonnie and Clyde-esque mission to rid the United States of the vilest, most nauseating people ever to be birthed from unlucky wombs: pop-culture celebrities.

"God Bless America" is not an especially great film; its acting, particularly Murray, is mediocre and at times annoyingly unchanging, the writing is angry and inspired, but unfortunately is nothing profound or realistic, and the plot is overly simplistic yet drawn out. These descriptions would probably push most people to stop reading, but note that I strongly recommend this film as a sheer guilty-pleasure and not as great cinema.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way let's crack on with all of the gory savoriness. Murray plays Frank, a middle-aged nobody living an unremarkable life. A divorcee with a daughter who would rather play her Nintendo than visit him, Frank is left with his miserable little job, his miserable little car and his miserable little apartment. Sad and alone, Frank surfs aimlessly through television channels and is constantly bombarded with programs like Jersey Shore, The Real Housewives, American Idol, Jackass, My Super Sweet Sixteen and all of the inane drivel that you and I (hopefully) suffer through when we switch on. The commercials are for energy drinks, the news shows hatemongers; everything he sees in the media or in the street or at the office leads Frank to proclaim that our nation has lost its "decency".

Finally fed up of a nation in which we prize the idiots of the world and would rather tweet than have a meaningful conversation, Frank decides to kill himself. In a stroke of inspiration, however, having nothing to lose he chooses instead to kill one of the "stars" of My Super Sweet Sixteen. He is spotted by an outcast girl, Roxy, who begs to join him on his quest to kill all of the people who make America so shameful, and so their adventure begins.

There is very little else to the story, and it's pretty obvious that there are only two possible outcomes for the film, but that doesn't make it any less fun. Secretly--or probably not to secretly--I found myself jealous of their vigilante escapades and more angry and ashamed of the life I live. Every time a head splattered it was exhilarating to the most pretentious parts of my brain.

One really cannot justify an hour and forty-five minutes of this when in reality this story and these characters should be nothing more than a subplot, but it was so nice to finally see everything that I hate condensed into one small unit and finally blown apart. For many, they will find themselves embarrassed for falling victim to a routine of being sucked into a brainless technical age (that's a fun oxymoron), but for the rest of us it will be happy daydream for a promising future of people having their own thoughts once again and not high-fiving because they have had them.

2.5/4