Movie Review: 'About My Father' Robert De Niro’s father-son romcom is pure self-indulgence

Rating: **

If it’s a passably enjoyable father-son film you are looking for, About My Father fits the bill, though just about. This is not as crazily comic as you think. But it’s not all a waste of time either. How can it be, when the great Robert de Niro plays an Italian immigrant who follows his son to his future in-laws' vacation with his super-affluent in-laws-to-be?

What follows is as tasteful as peacock meat. This is what de Niro serves his son’s in-laws, although they don’t know it. They seem very happy with the dish served. We are not quite that happy.

About My Father rings a false note from the word go. The father-son relationship, which is the core of the comedy lacks heart. De Niro can fit into any son’s father’s role. He doesn’t even have to try. Here, he looks detached from the droll comedy.

Sadly, the son here is played by Sebastian Maniscalco, a standup comedian trying hard to play a screen hero. As we know from our own experience (ref: Kapil Sharma), a good standup comedian is not necessarily a good actor. Maniscalco struggles with poorly written episodes while De Niro looks on.

This is a weak father-son story, poorly written and broadly performed. The director Laura Terruso seems somewhat bored by the plot. Most of the supposedly funny episodes are de-energized by the lack of freshness. The entire film reeks of disinterest, as though everyone is in it just for the heck for it. And yes, the big fat cheques couldn’t have hurt either.

Once the principal plot premise is gotten out of the way, the film simply collapses in a heap of heated hilarity. The ‘Big Funny Sequences’ fall flat on their farcical face. The sequence in which De Niro gives his son’s future mother-in-law (Kim Cattrall) a shocker of a haircut is just not funny. Is De Niro playing a chef or a hairstylist? Who cares! De Niro doesn’t.

The question that such pseudo-socialist films that dig at the super-rich class must answer is, if the capitalists are so self-indulgent and silly, how did they achieve such financial success?

As for the De Niro motor-mouthed father act, he is more restrained here than he was in that foul-mouthed borderline porn film Dirty Grandpa. This one has an embarrassing penis-size joke about his screen-son that De Niro could have avoided. But I guess he just wants to have fun with the fatuous script, and to hell with decorum.