BEFORE: One more film about fathers for this week's line-up, then I'm moving on. The last four films have been all about fathers and sons, so I'll switch things up with a film about a father and daughter before we close the book on Father's Day 2020. Now I could have linked straight from "Fathers' Day" to here via Bruce Greenwood, but by following a different link I squeezed in "Onward" as a little extra - but now I'll have to make up for that by dropping something else. I already doubled up once in June and I'd rather not do that again.
Octavia Spencer carries over from "Onward".
THE PLOT: A Pulitzer-winning writer grapples with being a widower and father after a mental breakdown, and 27 years later, his grown daughter struggles to forge connections of her own.
AFTER: If you watch enough movies, and I certainly have (and then some) you may start to notice some patterns, or the same formats and techniques being used again and again. On one level, OK, sure, there's nothing new under the sun, and we keep returning to the same TYPES of stories, if not the same exact stories. The details may change every day, but just like Greek theater or vaudeville, it's really the same stuff over and over again. The last real "new thing" to come along was probably the surge in superhero movies, and we're still in the middle of that trend - but for me, sometimes, it feels like all the other types of movies are stuck in neutral, they're revving their engines but not really GOING anywhere.
This is my way of saying that I've just watched another film about a struggling writer, and that's the third one in four days. I can't say how long this trend has been going on, but clearly for a long time - "Fathers' Day" came out in 1997, over 20 years ago, and today's film is just 5 years old. But it's not just the failed author thing, it feels like this movie tried to mash a bunch of commonly-used plot points and movie tropes together, hoping that the end result would end up being something greater than the sum of its parts. And I'm not convinced that it is, though I'm willing to debate this point.
There's the split-timeline method of storytelling, which has gained a lot of ground in the last few years. Rather than tell the whole story from start to finish as it should be, the film toggles between two sections, one that starts shortly after the death of Jake Davis' wife and Katie Davis' mother, and then the other one depicts Katie as an adult, doing social work with troubled kids and also experiencing her first real adult relationship after a long period of serial one-night-stand dating. More on this in a bit. Since Jake doesn't appear in the later timeline, we're free to make some assumptions about what happened to him, and the fact that he appears to have medical problems resulting from an accident in the earlier timeline, the theory that he's no longer alive would seem to be supported. This creates the opportunity to throw in another tired trope, the chance for a prominent actor to play an unwell person, which as the theory goes, can create a shortcut to get to an Oscar nomination.
We eventually learn that Jack's medical problems are tied to the accident in which his wife died, and that they're not just physical, there's some mental damage as well. And when you combine his medical problems with his writing problems, namely an inability to match the success of his award-winning previous novel, and the resentment that exists between him and his wife's sister and her husband (who blame him for her death), this creates a perfect storm of disaster in the first timeline - after his in-laws take care of Katie for 7 months while Jack gets the care he needs for recovery, the in-laws hatch a plan to propose adopting Katie themselves, as they have more money than a struggling writer, and the connections to get her into the best schools and such. Once Jack returns, he takes over again as Katie's sole parent and vows to make things work.
Non-meanwhile, in the later timeline, the adult Katie goes through a progression of those one-night stands, and confesses to her therapist that she's incapable of feeling love, and honestly doesn't miss it. This eventually changes when she meets Cameron, who coincidentally is very familiar with the book that her father wrote about raising her as a single parent, and can't believe that he has a chance to date the woman who inspired a character in his all-time favorite book. Yep, he's a struggling writer, too, and he's maybe got some issues himself, but honestly, there's no time to get into those. But for Katie, who clearly has daddy issues, a moody struggling writer is somebody that she can't seem to resist. This is basic Love Psychology 101, if you ask me, however it is commendable that we slowly get to learn how the events of the earlier timeline affect grown-up Katie in the later timeline. Whatever went down between her and her father is obviously still having an impact on who she is, what she does for a living, and who she falls in (and out) of love with.
(You know a character is off the rails if they're in a relationship with another character played by Aaron Paul - and HE'S the more stable sensible one of the two.)
Non-meanwhile, again, in the earlier timeline, the in-laws feel that Jack is an unfit parent, when you combine his recurring health issues with his inability to write another best-seller, therefore his inability to provide for his daughter, so they file for custody in court. It's a huge long shot that a judge would award custody to a relative when there is an alive, active parent available, but since this is America, a very litigious society, the in-laws feel that whoever can hire the more expensive lawyer is going to win the case. And all this pressure only makes Jack's writer's block worse, and also creates more stress, which isn't helpful for his continuing health problems.
Look, there's a simple fix in a family custody case, and it kind of bothers me that a supposedly-clever writer wouldn't think of it. If the in-laws really want to adopt Katie, one potential solution to this dilemma would be to name them as her legal guardians in the event of Jack's death or medical inability to take care of his daughter. This solves a number of problems at once, it gives the in-laws what they want (eventually, maybe) and it gives Jack piece of mind that if his medical condition gets worse, then someone will be providing for his daughter. And then, just maybe, it satisfies the in-laws enough that they drop the court case and stop asking for custody, at least temporarily, but maybe for good. And if he should die, then he wouldn't be in much of a position to care about who's raising Katie. Done and done, but instead both sides huddle with their lawyers and end up unwilling or unable to compromise.
NITPICK POINT: In the earlier timeline, which is set around 1989-1990, Jack still uses an old-fashioned typewriter, as most authors seem to do in movies (even current ones). He says something about how in 10 years, maybe everyone will be using computers to write stuff. I'm fairly sure that by 1989 writing novels on laptops was already very commonplace. But if the movie was accurate on this detail, then they couldn't really show that great clackety-clack of the typewriter, or have that typical scene where a whole stack of paper goes flying up in the air, ruining that author's last week of work, because there's simply no back-up copy, or any way to put the pages back in order. Please.
Also starring Russell Crowe (last seen in "Boy Erased"), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "The Clapper"), Kylie Rogers (last seen in "Collateral Beauty"), Aaron Paul (last seen in "Eye in the Sky"), Diane Kruger (last seen in "The Host"), Quvenzhane Wallis (last heard in "Trolls"), Janet McTeer (last seen in "Albert Nobbs"), Jane Fonda (last seen in "Book Club"), Bruce Greenwood (last seen in "Fathers' Day"), Michelle Veintimilla, Ryan Eggold (last seen in "BlacKkKlansman"), Paula Marshall (last seen in "Cheaper by the Dozen"), Brendan Griffin, Chris Douglass.
RATING: 5 out of 10 missed bedtime stories
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