Bobcat's Dogmatics

You might remember Bobcat Goldthwait as the mewling, addled gang leader from Police Academy 2 but since then he's been quietly forging a career writing and directing barbed, close to the knuckle indy satires. Sleeping Dogs was released a few years ago and went largely unnoticed probably due to it's er, distasteful premise however it's a funny and quite touching rom-com. Cajoled by her fiance a young woman shares her dark secret, that one bored night she gave oral pleasure to her pet dog perhaps unsurprisingly it doesn't take long for her life to get turned upside down in the ensuing turmoil and recriminations. A surprisingly mature script keeps the film from sinking into John Waters territory and there's enough laughs to sweeten the salty brine of social awkwardness that soaks through all the wonderful performances.


Goldthwait's most recent offering, God Bless America, is a clunking hammerblow to the nutsack of contemporary Amurica and it's moronic media virus. After a thoughtful office worker gets fired and receives a terminal diagnosis he snaps and starts a violent rampage to lessen his country's burden of noisy idiots starting with a 16 year old reality TV starlet. There's plenty of Network-ish rantings peppering the blood letting and though I'm onboard with the cultural stupefaction invective the laughs just weren't there and it falters in the final third. Still it's quite enjoyable, kind of like Natural Born Killers mashed with Idiocracy.