Going The Distance
American Dreamz, written, produced and directed by Paul Wietz.There are many shades of comedy, from the cheerful hues of The Great Race to the bold vaudeville patterns of Duck Soup, to the dark satirical shades of The Loved One. It's a tricky job to determine the tone of a comedy, and just as important as the success of the jokes themselves. Such is the case with American Dreamz, the latest Paul Weitz comedy. It seems to be reaching for the satirical sharpness of Network or To Die For, but the overall tone is so gentle it throws the dark subject matter into bold, awkward relief.
Dreamz contains four sub-plots. The first involves President Staton (Dennis Quaid), a Bush-like statesman who is having a crisis after his latest election victory. He realizes he knows nothing about the nation, and is scrambling to to view things beyond his staff's carfeully filtered briefings. His approval ratings have plummeted, and rumors abound of a nervous breakdown. The solution? Have the president guest judge the highest-rated television show ever - the Idol-like American Dreamz.
We're then introduced to Martin Tweed (Hugh Grant), the Simon-Cowell-style host of the program. He's being dumped by his current paramour, and is feeling bored, a prisoner of the show's success. To keep himself interested, he makes increasingly bizarre contestant choices.
This involves Omer (Sam Golzari), an inept Iraqi terrorist whose secret passion is show tunes, driving his fellow extremists to distraction. He's soon 're-assigned' to stay with his relatives in California as a sleeper cell, awaiting orders that will (presumably) never come. Omer meets his gay cousin Iqbal (Tony Yalda), who has applied to become a Dreamz contestant. Things get complicated, though, when Omer's good-naturedness gets him chosen over Iqbal.
Dreamz's talent search also discovers Sally Kendoo (Mandy Moore), a calculating manipulator determined to win the show at any cost. She too has just dumped her steadfast boyfriend William Williams (Chris Klein) - she is repelled by his kind heart - and he responds by enlisting in the army. Tweed finds a kindred spirit in Sally, or at least a worthy adversary - he's never met anyone more self-centered than he is. Naturally, she's a shoe-in for the show. When William returns from Iraq wounded, her agent encourages her to fake renewing the romance to boost her vote count.
Since the president is now to be a guest judge, and Omer a contestant, the terrorist leaders order Omer to spearhead an assassination attempt. Iqbal begins managing him, and Omer's popularity is a direct threat to Sally's victory. Naturally, everything races together on a collision course.
Most of this isn't very believable, even on comedic terms. It's never convincing that Quaid's president would allow himself to get into this situation. It's also tough to buy that Omer would be chosen over Iqbal, as Iqbal is more entertaning simply standing around talking than Omer is singing (Yalda's performance is one of the most consistently entertaining in the film). Additionally, Omer is too conflicted from the beginning to be very vivid as a performer or a terrorist. Sally is pushed to new heights of ambition by her agent, but this role hardly seems necessary considering her new love interest (and her own nature seems too knowing).
It's also odd that we begin the film with the president in a position of strength (having won the election). It would seem like there'd be a lot more opportunity for suspense (and satire) by setting the story in the beginning of the re-election campaign and the latest season of Dreamz, and have the film take place over that year. The plot would then culminate in the election and the finalists' showdown. The film as it stands has little tension - we know only a couple of the contestants can have a chance to win, or there's no story.
This premise intrinsically involves the corruptive powers of fame, coupled with a terrorist assination of the President on national television. This is pretty dark stuff, but the film never seems to want to move beyond the tone of a light cartoonish farce. As a result, most of the jokes fall uncomfortably flat. Quaid is miscast - he seems far too handsome, intelligent and confident to portray a buffoonish proxy growing dissatisfied with his own powerlessness. Dafoe's Cheney never seems that nasty, either - he's simply doing what needs to be done to put this guy across to the public. The Kendoo/Tweed romance isn't a bad set-up, but their mutual wickedness doesn't focus into something darkly compelling. Instead, it simply curdles into two despicable people who probably deserve each other.
Considering how crowd-pleasing the film wants to be, it takes a big risk by making the entire cast caught up in the struggle for fame and power. It's fine to make all of your main characters corruptible, but the script doesn't have the courage of its convictions, and there's no innocent secondary characters for contrast. Even William gets sucked into the fame/power whirlpool, but it's never clear why, or even appropriate. The film could use William better as a moral center, unwittingly duped by Sally, who'd been sleeping with Tweed all along. This would make for a stronger betrayal in the last third, and better justify his desperate actions as a result. Iqbal, had he been the contestant, could have simply been blinded by ambition, manipulated by the terrorists until the last minute.
The film seems to want to portray this greed for fame and power as destructive, but only two characters truly reap the whirlwind. If you want to show everyone as greedy and manipulative - and make a comedic morality tale - the script needed to take it to its logical conclusion and destroy almost all of them. Sally, unstoppable and indestructible (perhaps like Reese Witherspoon's Tracy Flick in Election, a truly sublime dark comedy), would have made the perfect survivor. Unfortunately, American Dreamz hedges its bets, wins some battles, but loses the war.
