The President, upon re-election, decides to start reading the newspaper again and he finds out that he doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does about the world. This causes him to get a little depressed, stay in his bedroom and continue to read about the world around him. To get him out of his funk, his chief of staff gets the top rated television show in the world, “American Dreamz,” think “American Idol” with only Simon judging, to hire the Prez as a special celebrity judge for the final episode. Among the contestants on this current season of “American Dreamz” are Sally, a soulless vamp from Ohio with an injured war hero as a sort of boyfriend, and Omer, a flunked out terrorist who was sent to live with Iraqi-American relatives in Orange County to get him out of the way. They will battle for the top spot, America will vote and host Martin Tweed will try to keep his contempt for the show, and his life, hidden.

I chuckled throughout the entire film and I give credit to a clever script and excellent performances for that. Hugh Grant as Tweed appears to channel an early Michael Caine for much of the film, while Willem Dafoe nearly steals the show as the Cheney-like chief of staff. Though Dennis Quaid and Marcia Gay Harden are recognizable as a George and Laura Bush-like First Couple, they also round out their characters, humanizing them and keeping them from being one-dimensional spoofs of public figures. As for the contestants, Mandy Moore does a good job as Sally, making her someone that you actively root against, while knowing that she is exactly the type of person who often wins these contests, but it is Sam Golzari’s performance as Omer that “Omerizes” the audience. He is a Broadway loving Iraqi singer, who discovers that he is on a quest to attain his “American Dream,” while involved in a plot to destroy it.

The supporting cast was top-notch too with Jennifer Coolidge and Seth Meyers doing good work as Sally’s mother and agent respectively. The break-out performance from the supporting cast though was Tony Yalda’s performance as Iqbal, Omer’s gay cousin and the one who sent an audition tape to “American Dreamz.”

I also really enjoyed the songs that the contestants sang as they represented a spoof of the types of songs sung on “American Idol.” For instance, Sally opens the show with “Mama Don’t Drink Me To Bed Tonight,” a whiskey soaked country ballad, and dedicates it to her conveniently injured in the war and therefore heroic boyfriend, William. Omer sings more traditional standards and they perfectly capture the essence of the character as he moves from bumbling terrorist to rising star.

Is “American Dreamz” as biting a satire as “Dr. Strangelove?” Of course not. “Dr. Strangelove” had the incredibly talented Peter Sellers to play several roles and carry the film and it had the genius of Stanley Kubrick behind the camera. “American Dreamz” is a good movie though and while many will view it as an innocuous comment on modern society, there is actually a much sharper and acerbic message that will poke through upon further review.

Andy Warhol once said that everybody will be famous for 15 minutes. “American Dreamz” show us how that is happening in modern culture. While we think we are seeing reality in reality television, what we really see is heavily manipulated. When reality truly does intercede in reality television, the audience is ill-equipped to deal with it and ends up manipulating it into a “neater” reality by themselves.

You don’t need to get so heavy seeing this movie though. If you are looking for some laughs at the expense of terrorists, the President and the people involved in a nation-wide talent show, “American Dreamz” will keep you entertained.

***1/2

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