‘Yeah, we talk about life and stuff. It’s not like I’m trying to see his dick…’
I’m not normally a massive comedy fan. Not cinematically anyway. For me, real humour comes from getting to know a group of characters over a long period of time, their nuances and complexities, their relationship with each other… it’s for this reason that I love It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia or Peep Show so much – and also for their darker sensibility. With that in mind, I Love My Dad is the most I’ve enjoyed a comedy film in a long time. Let’s explore why…
Chuck (Patton Oswalt) is desperate to reconnect with his son Franklin (James Morosini – who also writes and directs). To do this, Chuck concocts a misguided plan to pretend to be a hot waitress so that his son will respond to his messages again – even if he thinks he’s messaging some random girl named Becca (Claudia Sulewski).
It’s an utterly ingenious premise and the fact that it is apparently based on something that actually happened between Morosini and his father makes it all the more delicious. Oswalt is superb as the well-meaning but psychotic Chuck and both him and Morosini take great pains to ensure that I Love My Dad never overplays its hand or goes too over the top. Even the sexting scenes are handled with relative restraint. A sentence I never thought I’d write about two characters that are father and son. In this respect, Morosini’s work reminds me of the films of Jim Cummings – clearly very personal but also universal and riotously funny.
I Love My Dad is hilarious, surprisingly touching and utterly unique. While it took home a couple of awards at the South by Southwest film festival, this is a movie that deserves to be seen by a much wider audience. Well worth seeking out.