American Dreamz

"American Dreamz" is not the funniest or cleverest film ever made, but it isn't as bad as a lot of the other reviewers are saying. To be sure, it will offend anyone who is a fan of American Idol, President Bush, or Al Qaeda.

The jokes are cute but will not leave you rolling in the aisles. There are really good performances throughout, especially by Willem Dafoe. who I had never really seen in a comedic performance.

This film could have been more mean spirited, but they actually went out of their way to make all the characters empathetic. My favorite part is when the terrorist are looking forward to eating grapefruit sorbet.

It's a shame this film was not more popular in the theaters, because it has a lot going for it despite it's faults. Hopefully it will be more popular on DVD.

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.

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.

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.

Martin Tweed, played suitably by Grant, is the despicable TV host of a talent show. He treats his staff abominably and is interested only in making his show as vulgar and controversial as possible.

Meanwhile, Quaid plays a thinly disguised parody of Bush, as the US president in the middle of a nervous breakdown. His chief of staff (an almost unrecognizable Dafoe) acts as his puppeteer.

Add to the mix two would-be singers and competitors in the show: a female version of Tweed (Moore, as a white trash parody of Britney Spears) and a failure of Muslim terrorist, who loves American musicals.

The result is a movie that satirizes everything: obsession with celebrities; shallowness; white trash; fanatic terrorists; stupid politicians; self-centered TV personalities; the Middle East; the West; etc...

The low rating might indicates that the movie is uncomfortable to watch, rather than amusing - which was my case.

Unfortunately, in the 11 years since the movie was released, the socio-political situation did not improve a bit. The current US president is a worst fool than Bush, terrorism is out of control and celebrity-obsessed youth is shallower than ever. Not much to laugh about.