Fathers' Day

She asks them independently if they could they help her find the boy.

We have a lawyer called Jack, (Billy Crystal), rich and successful of course, who's had two failed marriages and who packs a very violent head butt which he is not slow to use if someone physically threatens him; apparently a commonly necessary and very useful ploy in modern America.

He's cool and remorseless enough to be scary.

And then there's Dale (Robin Williams), who would seem to be the natural prey for the likes of the effective Jack. He's informed about the wayward boy whilst he actually has a gun in his own mouth and is about to commit suicide, (in a comedy!!?).

Poor Dale doesn't run his life well at all. He's tried to kill himself a number of times, life seems meaningless, he's a failed playwright and poet, and he's delighted to help find the boy (" I've got nothing planned for tomorrow.")

The boy is no sweet lad either, as we'd expect in such a film, and presents some special challenges for these aspiring fathers. Young versions of Jack and Dale apparently spend their youth throwing up at punk rock concerts and ripping off drug dealers, in modern comedies like Fathers' Day anyway. It's all a bit depressing really.

Fathers' Day is slickly made, with Crystal and Williams sluicing plenty of juice out of their characters.

The film is basically about unlikely characters developing friendship.

There's even a third Dad in Fathers' Day, the fellow who has been the boy's father for the last sixteen years. He's literally dipped in shit and then ends up befriending the fellow who does the deed.

If film mirrors the society they're made in, and they usually do, then Fathers' Day paints a pretty nasty picture of the U.S. Fathers' Day has a feel of reality about it, unlike say the Jim Carrey movies, and is much more like the sharp edged satirical comedy of Seinfeld, than a more traditional lighthearted comedy movie.

Fathers' Day also stars Julia Louis-Dreyfus who stars in Seinfeld. It's just that the reality depicted is so unhealthy.

Fathers' Day is a little like Billy Crystal pulling that calf out of its mother in City Slickers except that it's a boy being born, and the muck is shit and vomit, instead of birth fluid. The desert innocence of City Slickers has been replaced by the morbid mess that is urban America.

It's all well and good for comedies to be realistic, but there aren't too many positive messages in Fathers' Day. But there's plenty of people who couldn't care less about that.