MY FATHER THE HERO
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Gerard Depardieu, Katherine Heigl, Dalton James, Faith Prince. Screenplay: Francis Veber & Charlie Peters. Director: Steve Miner.
For a while there, I had declared a personal moratorium on Disney's live-action formula pictures. Although I found COOL RUNNINGS moderately entertaining, I realized that was about as much as I could expect: a smile here, a chuckle there, something I'd take my kids to see if I had any and wanted to get them out of the house on a Saturday afternoon. With the presence of Gerard Depardieu, I had slightly higher hopes for MY FATHER THE HERO, but I was kidding myself. While he lends a roguish charm to the proceedings, he's still trapped in a movie which seems designed more to divert than to entertain.
Depardieu plays Andre, a divorced father who has planned a Bahamian vacation to spend time with his fourteen-year-old daughter Nicole (Katherine Heigl). Andre has been mostly absentee in recent years, and as a result Nicole has developed a rather confused attitude towards her father. When she falls for a handsome island resident (Dalton James), she tries to impress him by concocting a wild story about her past, including telling him that Andre is her lover. Word spreads quickly around the resort, and Andre finds himself tremendously confused at the reactions he's getting. Eventually, Andre becomes privvy to the story, and spins an even more complicated yarn in an effort to win back his daughter's affections.
It would be one thing if MY FATHER THE HERO were simply predictable, which it is, but it is also just badly written. MY FATHER THE HERO is based on a French film I have not seen titled MON PERE, CE HEROS, but it is hard to believe that the characters could have been as fuzzy as they are here. We are supposed to understand that Andre has a selfish streak and a tendency to disappear from people's lives, asserted by Nicole and emphasized by a telephone relationship with a girlfriend who doesn't appear until the last scene (in a cameo which shouldn't be a surprise if you recognize the voice). However, we never see any indication in his interaction with Nicole that he is anything but a completely doting father. It is she who tries to distance herself from Andre, not the other way around, so her subsequent string of lies doesn't seem particularly motivated. The lies are just a device, and even if we believe it's just adolescence at work there's no particular reason to care. One doesn't necessarily expect well-rounded characters from a film like MY FATHER THE HERO, but one should at leas find reasonably coherent types.
Still, as silly and incoherent as the script may be, Gerard Depardieu still gets to read many of the lines, and he has superb comic timing. Once Andre is part of his daughter's fabrication, he plays some light and clever scenes with the object of her affections, bland Bill Campbell look-alike Dalton James. Depardieu has a pleasant rapport with Katherine Heigl, and with a flirtatious tourist played by Faith Prince. But it's part of the problem that he has such a rapport with everyone; if part of the point is that Andre needs to become a better father and a more selfless person, we never see any indication that he is anything but a perfectly nice guy, if slightly overprotective. There would have been so many more comic possibilities in a rakish playboy being saddled with everyone's belief that he is a cradle-robber. Heigl is lovely as Nicole, perhaps too lovely; I'm not sure why she'd need to lie to hook anyone.
MY FATHER, THE HERO is wholesome, good-natured and does virtually nothing to offend. But it needs more than that, namely something to make it worth ninety minutes of anyone's time. Gerard Depardieu is fun to watch, and proves surprisingly adept at physical comedy. It would have been nice to see him work with a script that seemed to have any imagination or sense of structure behind it.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 heroes: 5.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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