Director: Bobcat Goldthwait
Year Released: 2009
Rating: 2.0
Poetry teacher (and failed author) Robin Williams uses his douchebag son's death - by means of auto-erotic asphyxiation - as a way of increasing his own popularity and furthering his own career, going so far as to ghost-write his son's suicide note and journal. Loses a good deal of its (well-earned) malice from the first act when Daryl Sabara's character leaves the movie - he's so repulsive and crass but he provides the movie with a lot of bite and nerve (and genuine insight, like, "Come on baby, that pussy's not going to eat itself"), before it more or less gives out and becomes a weak critique of the Cult of the Deceased, wherein lousy people in life somehow attain near-mythic status in death (though how a single letter would move a whole school to tears and idolatry is a stretch). Robin Williams does fine, as well, showing great restraint ... that is, before finally giving in to the impulse at the end, stripping naked and jumping into the school swimming pool (an urge many people share ... though, ahem, off the record).
