I Love My Dad will debut in limited theaters on Aug. 5, and be available on VOD on Aug. 12.
Few recent American indies have executed their offbeat proof of concept with such imaginative grace. I Love My Dad, in which actor-director James Morosini extrapolates from the time his actual father really catfished him in real life (in the guise of a hot girl), is exactly the kind of intense and deviously fun adult comedy-drama the last few summers have been missing. With Patton Oswalt in tow as Morosini’s fictional father, from whose point of view the film unfolds, it also becomes a strange and radical act of cinematic empathy, in which Morosini finds uncanny understanding and forgiveness. In short, it’s a blast, and a deeply meaningful one at that.
While the real events may not have devolved into a borderline thriller, Morosini draws from their basic premise when laying the movie’s foundations. He plays Franklin, a gaunt, awkward young man suffering from severe depression. Oswalt plays Chuck, a lifelong helicopter parent who finally realizes it’s time to be there for his son. However, as part of his recovery, Franklin blocks Chuck on all social media and refuses to answer his calls. As a means to re-enter Franklin’s life, Chuck creates a fake Facebook profile of an attractive young woman named Becca, and begins a conversation that leads inadvertently to — buckle up! — months of romantic flirtation.
A decade removed from these events, Morosini expands on his stranger-than-fiction premise with a sense of inspired speculation. Not only does the movie concoct the wrinkle of a real Becca (Claudia Sulewski), a young diner waitress whose pictures and identity Chuck steals to create his profile, but it opens with on-screen text — “The following actually happened. My dad asked me to tell you it didn’t” — implying that, no matter how far things spiraled between Morosini and his father (or in this case, how far they will spiral between Franklin and Chuck), there exists some form of relationship between them on the other side. Whether hopeful or otherwise in retrospect, in the moment, it might make you wonder what exactly lies in store, but few things could prepare you for what unfolds (and, to Morosini’s credit, how they unfold).
In crafting the film from Chuck’s perspective — recalling Alma Har'el’s Honey Boy, in which Shia LaBeouf plays a version of his own abusive father — Morosini sets up not only a tale of compounding lies (a ticking time bomb from which neither father nor son will emerge unscathed), but a story that centers an understanding of why these outlandish events took the shape they did. Along the way, Morosini tells what is ultimately a tale of text-based chat, but with a sense of tongue-in-cheek immersion. As Franklin talks to the fictitious Becca and gets drawn in by her allure, the radiant Sulewski appears alongside Morosini, putting a smile on Franklin’s face as they enter into what often feels like a traditional cinematic romance, rife with montages and wordless moments where their eyes meet and their hearts begin to flutter.
When their texting becomes raunchy, the human connection fills Franklin’s life with uplifting music and vivid, flashing colors — which Morosini immediately undercuts in hilariously disturbing fashion, smash-cutting from Franklin’s dream of Becca to an exaggerated version of Chuck’s point of view, sans music or visual poetry. Chuck, despite his best efforts, similarly pictures Franklin by his side, and the more he goes along with his ruse to stay connected, the more he’s forced to reluctantly sext his own son. Where the romance between Franklin and faux-Becca is made stunningly real despite us knowing the truth, that truth is painted using the most hilariously awkward, cringe-inducing interactions between Chuck and a physical manifestation of his smiling, lovelorn son — intimate scenes and all — practically bringing Chuck to tears, over what he feels he needs to do just to be a part of Franklin’s life. “Shockingly funny” doesn’t even begin to cover it.
The film’s mere 90 minutes feature an unyielding sense of escalation. With each step Chuck takes towards re-entering Franklin’s life, new complications threaten to expose him, leading to even sillier and riskier deception. It’s like someone dropped a piano on Asghar Farhadi’s head; what we’re seeing unfold may as well be the cartoon canaries circling his concussed temple. All the while, Morosini and editor Josh Crockett maintain an expertly discordant rhythm, constructing a whiplash-inducing chronology that thrashes us violently between Franklin’s cinematic conception of romance, and Chuck’s jaw-dropping betrayals. The performances sell this contrast too, between Morosini’s heartbreaking vulnerability, and the desperation of Oswalt’s subterfuge, as a father barely keeping it together as he tries to make amends in the most ill-advised fashion. However, what ties it all together is the uncanny bounciness of Jeremy Bullock’s score, which evokes Jon Brion’s work on Punch-Drunk Love, shouldering the movie’s ever-morphing mixture of sincerity and propulsive dread.
Morosini’s penchant for staging striking visualizations even extends to crafting backstory, with brief glimpses into Chuck’s past that not only inform his character, but his morality-skirting strategies as a low-level fraudster. This includes, in one especially riotous scene, Chuck using an old online chess trick to rope his girlfriend Erica (Rachel Dratch) into the more suggestive parts of his plan. For a while, Chuck’s deception actually holds together, and he’s able to reunite with Franklin, but when the question of meeting the real Becca finally arises, the resultant third act is a powder keg.
With a car chase crescendo that builds on the movie’s preceding hilarity and intensity, I Love My Dad keeps ascending, and ascending, until it scrapes the comedy-thriller stratosphere. However, all the while, it never loses its laser-focus on the bizarre relationship drama at its core, about a son at his low point, looking for any shred of affection, and a father’s deeply misguided attempts to make up for lost time.
from IGN Reviews https://ift.tt/rYIlXaF
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