AMERICAN DREAMZ

Director: Paul Weitz (American Pie, About a Boy, In Good Company)
Starring: Hugh Grant, Dennis Quaid, Mandy Moore, Sam Golzari, Willem Defoe

I had hoped to see V for Vendetta last evening at the Shaker Square Cinemas. I came in, bought my tickets, got directed to a particular theater with a Vendetta mylar above the door, was surprised to be searched for cameras by some corporate schmucks, and sat down in a very crowded theater. Pretty quickly we realized we must be seeing a midweek special screening due to the saved seats, large crowd and corporate stooges worried about camera phones. We assumed it was a screening for Vendetta though. Once the 7:00 start time on our tickets passed, we started to wonder about what exactly had happened. When American Dreamz popped on the screen at 7:30 we knew. I blame the doofus who sold us our tickets.

After seeing Dreamz, I’m pretty confident I would have rather seen Vendetta. It wasn’t a horrible picture, it was however, a highly average one. The comedy was cute and moderately funny in a very broad sense, but not in any memorable way. I don’t think this flick is going to have any legs.

American Dreamz (with a “Z”, as the title track sung by Mandy Moore tells us) is more or less American Idol. The show is run and hosted by Hugh Grant’s pompous and unloved character (who is more or less the English jackass on American Idol). They get a collection of characters as their contestants, including the white trash Mandy Moore character (Britney Speare’s lookalike) and a reluctant middle eastern terrorist.

To concisely sum up, the president (played as a well-meaning, but bumbling George Bush by Quaid) will guest judge the finale of the show and the terrorist is supposed to blow him up. I’ll blow the ending for you, since I’m sure the tension would just be too much, but he doesn’t do it. Bush survives and even learns to lead on his own without the Dick Cheney character (Defoe) leading him like a marionette.

I don’t have a lot more to say about this broad comedy. It had its funny moments. I particularly liked the line “I’m going to prove how stupid I am by blowing myself up with this bomb I found”. That’s funny. It had a lot of less funny ones as well, unfortunately. As a final note, Mandy Moore really isn’t a very intersting actress. I’m not sure who’s putting her in movies. They should stop.

Standouts: The Middle Eastern kids were the funniest, Quaid’s President Bush wasn’t bad either.
Blowouts: Mandy Moore and the so-so script.

Grade: C