In I Love My Dad, the father-son make out session is only the beginning
Patton Oswalt excels as a deadbeat dad who catfishes his son in James Morosini’s cringe-filled comedy
Film Reviews I Love My Dad
In the pantheon of cinematic bad fathers, there will always be a place for Chuck (Patton Oswalt), the mendacious screw-up of an absentee parent in writer/director James Morosini’s I Love My Dad, a film that is both modest in presentation and epic in cringe. Chuck is a fast-talking loser with a bottomless well of unconvincing excuses as to why he’s not there for his long-frustrated son, Franklin (Morosini). So when Franklin is released from a mental health facility after attempting suicide, his healing process includes cutting all ties with his toxic father. The desperate Chuck reacts the way any horrible dad would: by catfishing Franklin with a phony Facebook profile using photos of an attractive young waitress named Becca (Claudia Silewski) at the local diner. After the depressed Franklin accepts Becca’s friend request, he falls in love with his online-only “girlfriend,” forcing Chuck to go to increasing lengths to continue the ruse.
Morosini, in only his second feature as director (after 2018’s Threesomething) is insistent upon taking this idea as far as it can go, as if testing his own commitment to his central premise and our ability to stomach the result. Some moments will test the fortitude of the heartiest up-for-anything moviegoer, including a scene where Franklin masturbates on the toilet to racy texts he thinks were sent by Becca but were actually sent by his father in the next room. Morosini, though, is smart enough to know that just grossing us out for 95 minutes is not a movie. So he tries to make his film dramatically credible. This proves more difficult, as he has nothing new or insightful to say about father-son relationships or the pernicious possibilities of social media. But managing to push the squirm-inducing envelope while still getting us to root for a reprehensible dad becomes its own sort of twisted achievement.
From the get-go, Morosini proves he’s not afraid of taking a risk even if he hasn’t quite thought through how each individual risk would affect the whole. Putting the formerly suicidal Franklin in such a dangerously fragile state is excessive and only serves to make Chuck’s Facebook deception painfully cruel. Morosini undercuts this to some degree by playing the role of Franklin as if under a stuporous cloud of emotional vulnerability that makes it more plausible that he’d fall for his father’s ploy.
There are less idiotic ways, of course, for Chuck to reconnect with Franklin. But Chuck is the type of misguided fool who would reject the best solution in favor of whatever bad solution pops into his head at that particular moment. So inspired by a casual anecdote from a co-worker (Lil Rel Howery, a hilariously deadpan voice of reason), he catfishes his own son. Despite the imaginary Becca’s relatively sparse Facebook profile, Franklin accepts her friend request. Initially, Chuck earns some family friendly laughs as he struggles to write texts that sound like they’re coming from a woman half his age. As their SMS-only relationship heats up, Chuck must tap dance around Franklin’s desire to talk and video chat with his “girlfriend.” Eventually and reluctantly, he agrees to drive Franklin to Maine to meet Becca, getting us closer to the inevitable moment when his destined-to-fail plan finally implodes.
At times the mind drifts to what the Farrelly Brothers, Seth MacFarlane or Matt Stone and Trey Parker or would have done with a story that seems to beg for a more outrageous or farcical approach. Morosini’s style is purely functional with very little snap or polish. But this actually works in the film’s favor. Although the movie is deeply uncomfortable in spots, what with the social media-enabled incest and all, Morosini doesn’t rub our noses in it, and humiliating his characters is not his goal. He also finds nifty ways to dramatize what are essentially two people continually typing on their phones. When Franklin and “Becca” are texting, she’s physically in the scene and interacting with him, reading Chuck’s SMS’s out loud with warmth, glee, earnestness or, during one cute moment, by pronouncing every typo. This not only skillfully overcomes a storytelling challenge, it also speaks to how a lost and lonely person can create a full-bodied relationship based solely upon texting. The creep factor kicks in later when Chuck is forced to sext with Franklin lest he start getting suspicious. In one frantic and well-played scene, Chuck copy and pastes the R-rated texts he’s been receiving from his girlfriend (a droll Rachel Dratch) and sends them right to Franklin.
If making the audience cringe was all I Love My Dad had to offer, it would be a nasty and forgettable stunt. Morosini claims the film is based on an incident that really happened between him and his father, so there was an opportunity to pay some authentic lip service to difficult familial relationships. He gives it the occasional shot but he’s not insightful enough to get beyond the basics. Oswalt, in a career-best performance, easily makes up for this shortfall. And that’s no easy feat. Chuck, whose pronounced underbite betrays a clenched-teeth anger at the problems he’s only brought upon himself, is a reprehensible sad sack crushed by the weight of his lies. Miraculously, Oswalt, who proved in Big Fan he has the chops to go dark, provides enough daylight for us to give Chuck some credit for harboring a genuine desire to be closer to his son.
I Love My Dad is about a uniquely modern violation of trust that lousy parenting made inevitable and social media made possible. Chuck and Franklin use technology in ill-advised ways yet their hearts are in the right place, which counts for a lot when you’re forced to gaze upon a father making out with his son. Morosini’s gentle directorial approach makes the film’s disturbing elements less of a turn off and he keeps us caring about, and understanding, Chuck despite our revulsion. If we’re ultimately not sure what greater point Morosini is trying to make, that’s okay. Consider ourselves honored, if slightly uncomfortable, guests at Morosini’s breakthrough therapy session.
30 Comments
Who redesigned the AVC review score box? Because it’s… not good.
I wish I could be more excited for this, but my regard for Oswalt took a big hit when he started shilling for sports books.
Huh??
It’s better than the ads I heard on Comedy Bang Bang a couple months ago asking people to “invest” in shares of modern art. At least a legal sports book will actually pay out of you win.
Another example of The AVClub’s grade not matching the text of the review, and Patton Oswald can do no wrong.
He might be out to prove you wrong on this one!
What I mean by that, is that the AVClub seems to think he can do no wrong. 🙂
Yeah, he seems to have his fans; but I cannot count myself among them.
Definitely reads more like a B-.
Modok was pretty bad.
What’s up with the new review info box? The formatting is all fucked up. The cast list list doesn’t even have the main actors. Perhaps most importantly, there’s no release date or info on where the movie will be available, which was sometimes the most important part of these reviews. Seriously, it now looks like it’s pulling the info from imdb, same as that new “What to watch” bar on the homepage. Lazy.
Literally every change they’ve made over the past half decade has been for the worse. I don’t know why I continue to be even mildly surprised.
Ugh, this sounds truly terrible. Patton!
Here guys, feel free to use my updated graphic
i think it hits streaming a week later, too, if you feel like a V3.
Thank you. It’s super annoying reading about a TV show or movie and I’ll spend 10 minutes looking at the review to see where the damn thing is airing before I just wind up googling it.
Agreed. AVClub has a very bad habit of not saying where things are available to view.
Also, that “cast list” doesn’t mention, you know, any of the leads.
Since you’re describing a relationship between two words, it should be father–son (with an en dash), not father-son (hyphenated). En dashes rule
James Morosini sounds like he has some deeply repressed daddy issues, that stall scene sounds real dark.
I only just found out the same kid wrote directed and stars in this??? Does he think he’s really on to something brilliant here, or could he not get anyone else to go along with such wacked-out nonsense?
sounds like this dad was a creep who tried to play it off as “I just missed you!” and now we got a weird comedy processing it.
Ew…ew…ew…ew.
I Love My Dad – Really…How to describe a movie like this? Social media pundits may
think it savvy and maybe even relevant but many will see through the thin
veneer of this story – which claims to be true but comes across as somewhat suss.
Comedy? Well, if a young man undergoing
a serious recovery session following an attempted suicide – being goaded by an
absentee father who has stolen a young woman’s social media details. And is now
trying to connect with his son by pretending to be this young woman wanting to ‘friend’
him…strikes you as funny it might work for you. Performances are fine, as is the cinematography, use of music
is in keeping, but the script is overloaded with cheap vulgar dialogue, like
you’d expect from a low grade R rated teen show. There are several life threatening
situations that leave you expecting a tragic outcome, all creating a bad taste
in the mouth. The father’s cringe worthy actions are only made partly bearable
by a good performance from Patton Oswalt, failing that, quite unforgivable. If this is the best to be expected from social media based
stories, then let’s hope we don’t get bludgeoned over the head with many more.
Twitter I can accept, but have heard it said; ‘with friends like Facebook you don’t need enemies’
and this show tends to illustrate that quite well. The better elements within
this one are let down by too many shoddy, unsavory moments. And World Movies ran this as a Father’s Day movie – How old
are their programmers?
I mean it’s allegedly based on a true story so yeah
American Dad did this first! …and .it. ..got……weird.
You can just say American Dad did it first. The glorious weirdness of that show is assumed.
I truly love Patton Oswalt, but noooo thaaanks.
“Miraculously, Oswalt, who proved in Big Fan he has the chops to
go dark, provides enough daylight for us to give Chuck some credit for
harboring a genuine desire to be closer to his son.”Doesn’t the very premise of the movie contradict the idea that he has a genuine desire to be closer to his son? And shouldn’t this be called “I Love My Son”?