A waste of nearly 2 hours
Added 4/17/2009
I'm a huge Mandy Moore fan & I had such high hopes for this movie when I first heard about prior to its 2006 release! I purchased this earlier this week at Wal-Mart and just now got around to watching it... Now I know why it took me so long to get around to buying/renting/watching this movie :(
It really wasn't very funny... stupid is more the word for it. The acting was good, but it's too bad the script sucked.
2 stars for at least casting great actors (for a horrible movie).
I'm glad I only paid $5 for it at Wal-Mart.
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Slightly bitter taste
Added 3/2/2009
I'v enjoyed many films by Paul Weitz and his brother Chris. They generally display a certain sensitivity and and maturity that I like. I understand the reasoning behind the attitude of the story. But the approach is a bit too cynical for my tastes. This is a well made film, with great acting/actors. The overall mood was just a bit depressing.
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Too Close to the Truth
Added 2/17/2009
I think it was Woody Allen who wrote, "Comedy is tragedy with distance".
The basic premise of AMERICAN DREAMZ is hilarious: To boost his popularity, the President of the United States agrees to appear as a judge on a television show, not unlike AMERICAN IDOL. The President, delightfully played as a moron by Dennis Quaid, is not unlike George W., his wife (Marcia Gay Harden) is reminiscent of First Lady Laura and chief advisor Willem Dafoe is a Karl Rowe clone.
The comedy, written and directed by Paul Weitz, also looks into the personal lives of the TV show's producer-host (Hugh Grant), a rather self-centered fellow, as well as two of the contestants, Mandy Moore from Ohio, who is sort of a female version of Grant, and Sam Golzari, a totally incompetent Arab terrorist with a yen for Broadway show tunes.
All of the performances are first-rate and the picture offers many amusing moments. The problem with the movie is that it also tries to find humor with the war in Iraq, where many people are being killed every day, and, worse yet, it has a major subplot that involves a plan by Arab terrorists to kill the President.
Unfortunately, this is a bit too close to the painful truth to evoke many laughs.
Even today, more than a half century after the event, one does not find humor in the Holocaust. You can make fun of Hitler, but not the Holocaust.
With this movie, you can poke fun at former President George Bush, but the threat of a terrorist plot to kill him is not funny.
Do we laugh at 9/11?
© Michael B. Druxman
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Racist, Pretentious and Immoral
Added 8/30/2008
This film pretends to be a spoof about the current obsession with superficial fame as expressed through 'singing' 'talent' shows. Whoever wrote this film is not clever enough to pull this off.
The main characters in the film are :
1) An 'camp' Arab guy and his 'friend'. His colleagues want him to blow up the US president when they meet on the singing show (he is the finalist).
2) A blue eyed blond haired 'American girl' (the other finalist)
3) Her boyfriend (who wants to marry her)
4) The host of the show (played by Hugh Grant).
The problems I had with the film were :
1) It was hardly a spoof of this current 'celebrity culture'. This is evident in the fact that character 2) ends up being the 'good guy' character. She is portrayed as the sensible one in the film!
2) Character 2) ends up sleeping with character 4), yet character 2) still is portrayed as a good person in the film! In fact her boyfriend (character 3) gets so annoyed that he picks up the bomb which the Arab guy has dropped in the bin (he decides not to bomb everyone in the end) and threatens to kill everyone on set. In other words, the woman is unfaithful, but was portrayed in a good light and the man is ridiculed for being upset over his partner's infidelity! How ridiculous is this?
3) The portrayal of the Arab guy and his colleagues was the most reprehensible part of the film. First of all the Arab guy who is more western friendly is portrayed as lighter coloured, more camp (yes, they use 'campness' to signify western culture v. Arab culture) than the others. His colleagues who want him to carry out the suicide bombings are portrayed as more obviously Arab with beards, stronger accents, less western clothes and a backward mentality. The battle is basically portrayed as a western culture v Arab culture battle for the mind of Omar (the camp Arab guy). The Arab 'culture' is represented by suicide bombers. Of course, the western culture wins.
The film is dumb pathetic film and a (very small) part of the propaganda war that allows western governments to get away with the murder of so many Sunnis, Shias because they 'are all suicide bombers' who 'hate the west' and want to 'stop all of our liberties'. Subconsciously, many people who watch this film will walk out of this film with a small message of confirmation that Arabs are backward barbarians who are just dying (pun intended) for OUR help (the Taleban, Sadam Hussein, The Shah of Iran, the House of Saud, Hosni Mubarak etc etc)!!
And how many have died in the Middle East at the hands of such idiocy. And what have the Arabs ever done to us in the west (how many died on 9/11 v Iraq and Afghan wars - do the maths).
Whilst many will disagree with this view, I would only be interested if their disagreement is justified by sound reasoning.
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How did I miss this at the cinema?
Added 6/15/2008
"American Dreamz" is a black-comedy/satire about an unwilling Middle Eastern terrorist who is called on to murder the U.S. President when he becomes a contestant on "American Dreamz", and "American Idol"-esque talent show.
When "American Dreamz" was on at the cinema, I thought it was just another stupid comedy making fun of reality-television, much like Ben Elton's "Chart Throb" (which I found to be disappointing, might I add). It was only when I found a cheap DVD copy of this film that I decided to give it a chance, and man, was I surprised. "American Dreamz" is smart, funny and highly underrated.
The idea of blending a comedy about reality television with a topical issue such as terrorism is just brilliant, and the script and the acting are great too. Hugh Grant is perfect as the self-absorbed Martin Tweed, host of "American Dreamz", a character so egocentric that he makes comments like "sometimes I envy myself", and Dennis Quaid does an equally good job as a President who bears more than a passing resemblance to George W. Book. Normally, I can't stand Hugh Grant, but for the first time in his career, I actually liked him. In fact, in the final scenes, he and Quaid had me rolling around my lounge room laughing. I think the thing that I liked most about this film, though, was the fact that all of the characters are written in a sympathetic manner. Writer/director Paul Weitz could easily have chosen to make fun of his cast of characters, but instead he seems to genuinely care for them and as a result he presents characters whom the audience can genuinely like and cheer for. Weitz did a similar thing in his directorial debut, "American Pie", and it was for this reason, I believe, that "American Pie" stands out as being one of the best teen movies of recent years.
This film came and went at the cinemas far too quickly and I think that is mainly due to the fact that most people didn't realize what this film was actually about. Now that it is available on DVD, however, it is definitely worth giving it a chance and you might find yourself as pleasantly surprised as I was.
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