American Dreamz (2006)

Directed by Paul Weitz

Hugh Grant
Dennis Quaid
Mandy Moore
William Dafoe
Jennifer Coolidge
Sam Golzari
Marcia Gay Harden

Clyde’s Place is not the first blog I’ve written. The first one was something called American Crossroads. It was nothing but politics from cover to cover and was started during the 2004 Presidential race.

After that I worked on some fictional stories. In the middle of one of these stories it became necessary for me to write in depth about the discrimination faced by homosexuals, and the fear they had to live with because of hate crimes. Shortly after finishing that story I got an email from a reader who complained that she and her husband both worked, they had kids to raise, and the last thing she wanted to be bothered with after a long day was the realities of what was happening in the real world. She insisted she only wanted to be entertained.

Trailer

In the off and on times when I write on Clyde's Place, the response I have received regarding everything I have written about American Idol completely dwarfs the total response I’ve had for everything and anything else I’ve written. That includes a few hundred political essays in my original American Crossroads blog. So what does this have to do with American Dreamz? Practically everything.

In American Dreamz, writer and director Paul Weitz unabashedly skewers Bush, Cheney, politics, American Idol, and the public that watches American Idol all in the same breath. That’s quite a bit of satire to cram into a one hour and forty-seven minute movie, but cram Weitz does and for the most part he succeeds quite well.

In the parallel world of American Dreamz President Staton (Dennis Quaid) has just been re-elected in a hard fought campaign. Left to his own devices Staton is non functional. It is his Chief of Staff (Willem Dafoe) who controls his every movement right down to telling Staton what to say through a hidden receiver placed in his ear canal. One morning President Staton decides to take it easy and do something he has never done before. He is going to read a newspaper.

“We do have one of those around, don’t we,” he asks his assistance. “I’m sure we do, but if we don’t we can get you one,” the assistant replies.

After having read his first newspaper Staton becomes addicted and begins reading anything and everything as if he were discovering his first Harry Potter story. And Staton learns from what he reads:

President Staton: Did you know there are two kinds of Iraqistanis?
[the First Lady holds up three fingers]
President Staton: I mean, actually, three?
Vice President Sutter: You mean Sunnis and Shi'ites and Kurds?
President Staton: You knew about this?

Also in this parallel universe is Simon Cowell clone Martin Tweed (Hugh Grant) who produces, hosts, and judges contestants on his version of American Idol called American Dreamz. He’s shallow, manipulative, and thinks way too highly of himself. All would be right with the world except that he finds having to actually host the show somewhat of an annoying minor detail.

Each season becomes more of a challenge to find the right contestants to drive his ratings higher because being number one in all demographics just isn’t enough for Tweed. To do this he has to choose the right contestants that Americans can identify with and their singing prowess has little to do with whom he chooses.

There is Ohio white trash karaoke queen, Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore) whose one big dream is not only to appear on Tweed’s show but to win it. After finding out that she has been selected Sally dumps her boyfriend who joins the Army and is sent to Iraq two weeks after a quick cram course in basic training. He promptly gets shot and returns home as a wounded vet just in time for Sally to reunite with him because it will make a better back story for her to win the title with.

Then there’s terrorist Omer Obeidi (Sam Golzari. His main thrill in life is listening to American show tunes on old records left to him by his mother who was killed by an American bomb. He promptly flops at terrorist training and is sent to the United States to live with relatives until he is needed. It is there that he is accidentally discovered performing a musical number and given the chance to appear on Dreamz.

When President Staton decides to appear at the finals of American Dreamz as a judge after being in hiding for several weeks, Omer is recruited to blow Staton and himself up with a bomb.

Grant is great as Tweed. In fact, one almost wishes he hosted the real show. His criticisms of the contestants are biting as he sits in judgment in a chair from the audience as if he is a god telling America who gets to enter the pearly gates and who gets a quick drop down the chute to hell.
(Tweed: It’s up to you America, only you have the awesome power to lift someone up into the heavens and create a new star.)

As Grant plays Tweed, he would be the kind of self-centered ego maniac you would hate living next to you, but in the confines of the TV screen he somehow manages to be almost likable.

Mandy Moore has played the bad girl before in a wonderful film called Saved! As Sally she’s a bad girl here also. She wants to win at all costs but is just as cold and passionless as Tweed about how that goal is achieved. In fact Tweed and Kendoo are mirror images of each other and Moore does a good job here of reflecting that.

Martin Tweed: That's weird; one can become quite detached from reality when one's famous.
Sally Kendoo: That sounds so cool.

Quaid somehow manages to turn Staton's lack of intellectual prowess into a child-like innocence. Unlike his counterpart in the real world, Staton's stupidity does not come from arrogance. He's gone through life unchallenged because there's always been someone telling him how great he is and who is willing to do everything for him. There's just been no need for him to wise up.


The real surprise here is Golzari as Omer the Terroist who thinks he should be a terrorist to avenge his mother’s death but knows he isn’t quite cut out for the job. He just isn’t ready to meet Allah especially when the guy that gives him the mission tells him he’ll meet him in the afterlife also…..in a number of years that is.

Weitz leaves no stone unturned in his skewering of our infatuation with pop culture and celebrity icons, so much so that we will vote for the manufactured image of our president rather than be bothered with the annoying details of how he might actually run the country. And the fact is, in eight years we have learned nothing as we go on our dreary way to pick the next pop idol president. In the wrong hands all of this could have been too heavy handed and dreary, but Weitz keeps things light enough so that we can laugh at ourselves while still giving us some things to think about.

There are a lot of laughs and memorable moments in American Dreamz and you’ll be thoroughly entertained, as long as you have no problem laughing at not only the situation of the world around you but by laughing at yourself also. No doubt there will be many who won’t get the joke and in this over the top satirical portrait they will be very offended. Those who won’t get the joke are the ones who still believe that everything they see on not just American Idol but all reality shows is the real, uncensored and unedited truth to the point that they actually believe they are voting for the best singer in the country. The others who may be offended, and probably very much so, will be the 20 percent who still believe George Bush is doing a fine job. And still there will be most of the audience, who will fail to see any correlation between Weitz's film and the real world at all.

It doesn't matter though. I had a good time watching it and I saw enough to realize that for all of it's satirization, Weitz strikes pretty close to home. So that leaves me no choice but to give American Dreamz my grade and I have decided that American Dreamz is a saucy little minx that deserves a well earned B+.