Robin Williams brings depth to ‘World’s Greatest Dad’

Because Bobcat Goldthwait is behind the lens and Robin Williams is in front of it, you already know that the title “World’s Greatest Dad” involves irony. And, sure enough. They team up to twist that heartwarming label into a button-pushing comedy referencing everything from autoerotic asphyxiation and compulsive teenage obnoxiousness to groupthink, hypocrisy and the irresistible lure of personal ambition. The filmmaker who gave us “Shakes the Clown,” famous for having one of the weirdest comic personas ever, Goldthwait both writes and directs this provocative — though, at times, labored — curiosity. If nothing else, as the kids go back to school this month, it reminds how miraculous it is that parents can hold two thoughts at once: One, children can be so frickin’ annoying, selfish and nasty. Two, but you love them unconditionally anyway.

In some ways, frustrated writer and high school teacher Lance Clayton really is the world’s greatest dad. How else to explain why he manages to care about the world’s worst teenager?

Williams makes his damaged loser character both sympathetic and pitiful. His single dad can’t get published, can’t get students interested in his poetry class, can’t get his shallow lover Clarie (Alexie Gilmore) to stop flirting with a hunky rival teacher (Henry Simmons), and can’t control his sexually perverted and verbally abusive son.

But then, about a third of the way into the movie, something major and unexpected happens to the jerky Kyle, played with droll brazenness by young Daryl Sabara. (I won’t give that pivotal plot point away here.) In reaction, Lance does something meant at first to protect Kyle. He perpetrates a big fat lie that begins to snowball in its effect. Though it wasn’t the original intent, the lie ends up satisfying the father’s every personal and professional desire.

Before Lance knows it, his writings and his class become wildly popular, Clarie fawns all over him, and his icky son indirectly becomes the source of it all. Those who once trashed Kyle now lionize him, exposing their own sheeplike absurdity.

Indeed, the irony runs thick. But the genuine feelings Lance and Kyle’s only true friend Andrew (Evan Martin) have for the real, unexpurgated scoundrel Kyle allow for a thin layer of warmth. It’s not the “Greatest.” But it’s enough to add some humanity to a scathing satire about how craven and foolish people can be.