How's this for a delicious set-up; Simon Cowell-esque TV mogul Martin Tweedy (Hugh Grant at his most devilishly unctuous) is looking to spice up his Pop Idol-style programme American Dreamz. He finds sexy white trash girl Sally " future Mrs Federline" Kendoo (Mandy Moore), desperate to win at all costs. He gets a call from a Cheney-lite puppet-master Vice-President (Willem Dafoe) and gets himself a Southern-fried moron of a President (obviously an entirely fictional creation), played by Dennis Quaid, as a guest judge. Oh, and token Arabic contestant Omer is actually a slightly rubbish suicide bomber.
Even though the entire plot is that what you just read up there, how can this film fail? Well, it takes some doing, especially with this cast, but American Dreamz' greatest achievement is in being entirely underwhelming. First and foremost, it's a comedy which just isn't that funny. It's smirk-funny. At best, it's snigger-funny. Never snot-bubble-funny. The director of American Pie, who coaxed a career-best performance out of Hugh Grant in About a Boy, is capable of much better.
Our Hugh is a good example of the way in which the film sets itself up to be knocked down. All the points which it obviously considers its Freddie Mercury's are in fact its Jim Morrison's; a terrible waste of potential. We all know Hugh Grant doing mean is The Best Thing In The World, and he is, unsurprisingly, the best thing in the film. But you can't help but hear Weitz whispering "No, more Simon Cowell, less...funny". And he's not in it enough.
Mandy Moore fares amazingly well (for a failed Britney Spears wannabe) as a Britney Spears wannabe hell-bent on fame, the moments of her thread satiring media manipulation providing a tragically infrequent high point. But, and this is another big problem, where the hell her character's going is always unclear. She's made of evil, we get that, but how much evil she's made of fluctuates. Mostly it's a healthy Darth Vader level of evil; scary and ruthless but not beyond redemption, but she occasionally, and suddenly, goes for the full Gillian McKeith.
Character development is a problem in American Dreamz, in the sense that there isn't any. Nobody rises above the 2-D; the Al-Qaeda types don't even make it into double figures; genuinely amusing characters like Omer's specTACularly gay cousin Iqbal and Jennifer "Stifler's mom" Coolidge are sidelined. Most worrying is the fact that the only character worth sympathising with is Quaid's moron President. If you're doing satire, for god's sake stick to your guns. President Staten comes across a poor simpleton who loves his wife and his country being manipulated against his will. George W. Bush (for ‘tis he they satire. Sorry if you hadn't worked that out yet. Also; James Bond is a heterosexual) is not a Forrest Gump-style embodiment of how the American Dream makes anything possible. He's the fucking antichrist. Everyone knows that.
The film's descent into sappy sentiment is as sickening as it is predictable. The level of bitterness in my tone as the review progresses is chronologically appropriate to the rising tide of bile you'll be fighting off watching the film, as you realise it's not going to meet its potential at any point. This material could have been incisive, biting satire, dripping with venomous wit, in the hands of Neil LaBute or even Kevin Smith (some dick jokes would've been welcome). Who'd've thunk the man behind the pie-fucker would deliver a tame, toothless family comedy?
That's why I didn't like American Dreamz. Because no-one fucks a pie.