FATHERS' DAY
A film review by Ben Hoffman
Copyright 1997 Ben Hoffman
There are few productions that are more risky than taking a perfectly good movie and doing a remake. How do you improve on a movie that is just about perfect . . . and why would you want to do that? In this case, the film was a subtitled French comedy that despite raves from audiences and critics played only in art-houses for no other reason than that subtitles are anathema to American audiences. To insure that this remake will not be a fiasco, some heavy professionals were brought in: the director, the screenwriters and the cast. Needless to add, the movie is hilarious, a worthy successor to Les Comperes which starred, in 1984, Pierre Richard and Gerard Depardieu.
This time around the film is called FATHERS' DAY. Several of the gags in the original film are used again such as the head-banging. The story, with but few exceptions, remains the same. In Les Comperes, (The Godfathers) Depardieu's role was that of a journalist with some Mafia-types after him. Here, Jack (Billy Crystal), is a well-to-do lawyer.
The story is of a married woman, Collette Andrews (Nastassja Kinski) whose 16-year-old son. Scott (Charlie Hofheimer) has run away from home. When Collette feels that her husband, Bob, (Bruce Greenwood, is not up to the task of finding their son, she embarks on her own. First she visits an old boyfriend, Jack, to enlist his aid in looking for her son. Jack asks why, after 17 years of their not having seen each other does she suddenly think of him as someone who would help her. "Because you are his father." She explains that when last they saw each other she was pregnant but did not tell him. He asks if she has a picture of the son; she shows him a photo. Examining it, offhand he sees no resemblance. Collette tells him that when Scott smiles, you can see the resemblance. "Do you have a photo of him smiling? " he asks her. That funny line was also in the original film.
Feeling that Jack is probably not going to help her, she goes to the home of Dale with whom she spent some sack time in Berkeley, also 17 years ago. Same routine: "because you are his father." A very funny bit (also in the original) is Dale about to commit suicide, a gun in his mouth when the phone rings. He talks with the gun in his mouth. Dale is a "nebbish" for whom nothing ever went right. He has all kinds of phobias, cries easily and has a few suicide failures. But hearing that he has a son, he is delighted and asks no hard questions. Yes, he will be very happy to search for his son.
Then begins the search which includes visiting the father of the girl with whom Scott ran away. Then visiting the girl's mother. Each of these adventures is very, very funny as only a one-two punch such as Robin Williams and Billy Crystal, good friends in real life, can deliver. They work extremely well together to make this a most enjoyable film. When you also have the two funniest screenwriters, Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel who together wrote Night Shift, Splash, Spies Like us, Parenthood, City Slicker I and II, A League of Their Own, Greedy, Mr. Saturday Night . and more, you cannot miss.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who is best known for starring on the Seinfeld show on TV, has a rather small part as Jack's wife.
Directed by Ivan Reitman 3.5 BYTES
4 Bytes = Superb 3 Bytes = Too good to miss 2 Bytes = Average 1 Byte = Save your money
Ben Hoffman
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