World's Greatest Dad

Robin Williams has one of his better recent roles as a born loser: a hopeless teacher mocked by his pupils and staffroom colleagues, a failed writer deserted by his wife and living with a loathsome teenage son who hates him. When the son suddenly dies, Dad forges an eloquently defiant suicide note and fakes an existentially insightful diary that makes the boy a posthumous hero at the school that once despised him, and Dad gets invited on to an Oprah Winfrey-style talk show. The movie works well for about an hour. But the director doesn't know where to take the idea and ends up turning it into a sentimental Robin Williams vehicle.