* * * 1/2 out of * * * * *

“World’s Greatest Dad,” Robin Williams’ latest career exploration is a deeply disturbing examination of how suicide can claim more lives other than the victims. It’s depressing on a level I’ve never seen. “Who could write something like this?” was a recurring question I had while watching.

Writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait (yes, the coarse-voiced lunatic from “Police Academy”) has crafted an emotionally exhausting film that is rivaled in bad taste only by his previous film where a woman performed fellatio on a dog. “World’s Greatest Dad” is literally the feel-bad movie of the year.

Williams plays Lance, a sourpuss of an unpublished writer who teaches high school poetry. His son (“Spy Kids’” Daryl Sabara) is a sex-obsessed jerk with no friends who accidentally kills himself while practicing auto-erotic asphyxiation. To save his son from posthumous humiliation, Lance makes his death look like a suicide, even writing a faux suicide note and a collection of forged journal entries.

That, in a nutshell, is the premise. Imagine pitching that to a studio head.

Somewhere after the instinctive feelings of disgust and disdain of watching how this all unfolds, Williams’ tightly nuanced performance as a dad who “loves his son, but didn’t like him” allows for the dark themes to be alleviated by the mixture of sympathy and support given to the Academy Award winner’s character. Not since 2002 when Williams’ holy trinity of “Insomnia,” “One Hour Photo” and “Death to Smoochy” came out has he been this good.

Goldthwait goes too far at times, especially during a montage where the ghost of the deceased son talks to his father, cord still wrapped around his neck. A few cringe-worthy moments is the toll for the deeply troubling complexities the viewer is forced to sift through.

Although you might need a cold shower and a phone call to your loved ones after all is said and done, “World’s Greatest Dad” is a decent experimentation with morose themes that needs to be seen to be believed.

I have never seen anything like it.

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