Like Father, 2018.
Directed by Lauren Miller.
Starring Kristen Bell, Kelsey Grammer, Danielle Davenport, Kimiko Glenn, Wynter Kullman, and Seth Rogen.
SYNOPSIS:
An estranged daughter has an awkward reunion with her long-absent father on a cruise ship.
Rachel Hamilton (Kristen Bell) is stood up at altar by Owen (Jon Foster) due to her workaholic habits. Her long gone father, Harry Hamilton (Kelsey Grammer), serendipitously shows up on the big day. Comedies by their nature have only a tangential connection to reality but Like Father meanders too often between having fun with the audience and simply misrepresenting itself to the audience.
The film begins with some slight misdirection. Both Harry and Rachel have an unfortunate shared vice in alcoholism. Said alcoholism leads them to, unwittingly, board a cruise headed for the Caribbean in a honeymoon suite setting up some effective comedy. Alas, though, Bell has been down this road before with Forgetting Sarah Marshall – and Like Father suffers by comparison. There is no equivalent of a Russell Brand infusing the comedy (and music) with the needed verve to push the film beyond its derivative origins.
Bell and Grammar make an effective duo though with some qualifications in order. While director Lauren Miller goes through the usual fish-out-of-water jokes (like, for example, Harry and Rachel being mistaken for a romantic couple) with competence, except in a handful of instances, the direction lacks any sustained visual flare. The plot twists with only one sole exception have been done before so often they deaden the potential of even the good jokes.
Still as a comedy, Like Father is remarkably good in places. The problem is the astonishingly long stretches where nothing interesting occurs along with stock stereotypes – the black couple, the empathetic gay couple, the old couple, etc. – that don’t hurt the comedy but don’t add much either.
Though the film can’t be said to be ever being boring it is too comfortable in deriving its comedy from other sources shamelessly and poorly. One long sequence seems stolen from a segment of Nickelodeon’s Double Dare TV series. Other sequences have remarkably similar beats to the surprise German hit film Toni Erdmann about another father trying to reconnect with his daughter.
Unsurprisingly, when Rachel and Harry discover karaoke on the cruise ship, the stage is set, literally and metaphorically, for the actors to pillage mainly 1980s classics. Thankfully, while Miller does go through some obvious music choices, there are some interesting choices in what material is used.
The film is also oddly structured with the basic premise taking a lengthy half-hour to get started. The Caribbean portion, however, is stunningly small. Most of the film occurs on the ship and Miller does use the space well for some well-timed visual gags. But, ultimately, the choice of the ship is strange. With one or two exceptions nothing really funny actually happens on the ship; one suspects the script being shaped into a virtual long advertisement for cruise ships. If so the film is ironically a failure at brand marketing because the most boring sequences are mostly on the ship so anyone watching is probably not going to take a vacation cruise.
An additional problem is the production history. While the film is directed by Laura Miller her full name is Miller Rogen and Seth Rogen, her real-life husband, does indeed appear – though only for a handful of scenes making his work basically into a cameo. Miller was probably wise to use Rogen sparingly as his presence is essentially functional.
None of this should detract from the film. A comedy doesn’t have to be original – almost none are. It also doesn’t have to be artistically motivated – clearly Miller is not. But making a mediocre movie with a mediocre script (which Miller wrote) and attaching star names to trick the audience with sub-par material is a bit manipulative.
Beyond the only average humor in the film, Miller seems indecisive. On the one hand, there are foul-mouthed jokes aplenty. But they are basically safe, raunchy jokes that are never too over the top. There is something to be said for moderation. On the other hand, just when feels the film is finally going to really take off and have some energy it remains plodding and obvious.
Even more problematic is how the film treats alcoholism. While the plot is based centrally on Bell’s addiction to work and drinking it does use alcohol strongly early on to define her character. But this is alcoholism, as Hollywood understands it. Bell plays a spaced out alcoholic well enough but she remains too pretty and too cognitively aware to be believable as a drunk. Ironically, Grammar who has had problems with alcohol in real life is also not very believable as a drunk.
If the comedy were genuinely compelling then the manipulation of such a serious problem as alcoholism might be daring or subversive. Here it just feels opportunistic and alcoholism is virtually dropped altogether in the last half of the film. Nevertheless, Bell is undeniably charismatic and compelling to watch even when the directing is not strong. Overall, as a directorial debut, this is a promising start for Miller but for Bell it is a frustratingly inert beast that needed a more powerful stylist to match her moxie. Like Father, on the whole, is an above average comedy that is worth watching but almost no one will find good reasons to revisit it.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Christian Jimenez
