FATHERS' DAY
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 1997 Christopher Null
What are the odds that the two would-be fathers of one woman's son would be two of the biggest comedians of the screen today!? Well, they're pretty good if you see FATHERS' DAY, yet another Ivan Reitman (BEETHOVEN, TWINS, KINDERGARTEN COP, et. al.) film that is so disgustingly sweet you'll want to spit out your jujubes. Billy Crystal and Robin Williams play the titular fathers, out to rescue the missing son they never knew they had. (Plot Simplified: Nastassja Kinski was a stonkingly huge slut and doesn't know who daddy is.)
For all its saccharine heavy-handedness, FATHERS' DAY does manage to come across as one of Reitman's better efforts in recent years, but the by-the-Hollywood-book formula, structure, and pacing really bog down the production. There's plenty of missed comic opportunities, but plenty that hit dead-on -- especially a notable, heavily-pierced cameo (watch for it!). And yes, the estranged son looks exactly like me. A 1/4 star bonus for that.
And yes, I'm sick of *writing* mediocre reviews, too.
RATING: ***1/2
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
-Christopher Null / null@poboxes.com / Writer-Producer -Visit the Movie Emporium at http://www.filmcritic.com -and Null Set Productions at http://www.filmcritic.com/nullset.htm
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews