BEFORE: Sorry, I'm late posting my review of my Father's Day film, as I said I would be. We just got back from three days in Chicago. I'm not counting today, which was totally just a travel day, it was all about getting back home. (We went from car to bus to plane to monorail to subway, with a total travel time of 10 hours...). So I didn't spend Father's Day with my father, but instead we visited my brother-in-law in suburban Illinois - we'd cashed in our Florida tickets from last April that were unused due to the pandemic, and took the opportunity to visit some family, at least. Accidentally picking Father's Day weekend to do that was a terrible mistake, because on Saturday JFK airport was SUPER crowded, we arrived two hours early but if we hadn't been Sky Priority, we never would have made the plane, I think we'd still be standing in line. The trip back was easier in some ways, fewer people traveling on a Tuesday.
We were only in downtown Chicago for about 6 hours yesterday, during which we re-visited Navy Pier, then strolled through the Northwestern U. campus to get to the Magnificent Mile, but only shopped at a few stores before getting coffee at the World's Largest Starbucks (5 floors!) and then making our way down to Morton's steakhouse for my wife's brother's belated birthday dinner. The two days prior to that were spend in a variety of Illinois bars, restaurants and antique shops in the Crystal Lake area. There are worse ways to spend your first trip after the pandemic, I suppose, but I was SO behind on sleep the first day, and very cranky. Now I'm back and I need to get back to work, and somehow still not fall too behind on movies, if possible.
Kelsey Grammer carries over from "Middle Men".
THE PLOT: After she's left at the altar, a workaholic advertising executive ends up on her Caribbean honeymoon cruise with her estranged father.
AFTER: Some odd parallels with this movie plot and our Chicago trip - both featured karaoke prominently, for example. And obviously this film is about travel, and that's what we were doing - but we went by plane and rental car, and the main characters here go on a cruise. We haven't been on a cruise since 2013, our third, during which we visited the Bahamas, Aruba, Curacao, Cartagena, Panama and Costa Rica. That was an 11-day cruise, and after that we'd been to just about every port in the Caribbean (Eastern, Western and Southern), so we stopped. But I remember that in 2013 the cruises were very concerned with keeping things sanitary, back then norovirus was a big deal and had taken down a few cruise ships, so we weren't allowed to serve ourselves at the island buffets, and hand sanitizer was being used everywhere - now of course, COVID-19 is the big problem, and even as cruises are starting up again, there have been a few COVID outbreaks in the last couple of weeks, but you'd think that the cruise ships would have learned from viruses in the past years how to really handle things, only they really haven't. Yeah, I think I'll stick to land vacations for a while.
We also traveled on Holland America, and this movie is set on a Royal Caribbean ship - parts of it play like a giant commercial for that cruise line, like they mention the floating bar very prominently and show people surfing on that big wave machine thing, and the zip-lines, waterslides and the robot bartenders. Then of course there's the big "Newlywed Game"-like competition and the big karaoke contest on the last night. NITPICK POINT: it's doubtful that any passengers would take time away from their excursions and all the activities and buffets to REHEARSE for the karaoke contest. Like, who DOES that? I would have been too busy eating around the clock, like we had a schedule down, we knew that at 2 pm there was the taco bar on the Lido Deck, then at 3 pm there were burgers and hot dogs served on the Promenade, then 4 pm snacks in the lounge, then 5 pm early seating dinner, and so on...until late-night chinese food and ice cream if you were somehow still hungry.
Fortunately there was a smart TV in our AirBnb in Illinois, and my wife figured out how to sign in to Netflix so I could watch this on a big TV, and not just on my phone. She joined me for the big climax of the film, the karaoke contest, and I let her know that she probably caught the BEST part of the film. Kristen Bell and Kelsey Grammer are both, like, real professional singers, Broadway level, and hearing them duet on "Come Sail Away" may seem a bit pedantic, but they really worked at it and gave great performances. Of course their characters are both over-achievers and workaholics, so maybe they WOULD rehearse for karaoke, and that's how you win the contest, I get it. (The previous ship contest they entered, they cheated, but you can't really cheat at karaoke...)
I can't recommend that anyone left at the altar then use the intended honeymoon cruise tickets to re-connect with their father, but maybe for Rachel, that's exactly what she needed to do. She certainly needed to go on some kind of vacation before she broke anything else at the office. But still, there was that important potato chip pitch to make, and she's the type of person who kept putting work before her relationships and her own happiness. But then again, that's EXACTLY why Owen left her at the altar. Plus, her father once faced a similar challenge, trying to balance his own career with being a father, and it led to him leaving Rachel and her mother (now deceased) when Rachel was only 5. So there's thirty years of baggage to unpack, and wouldn't you know it, getting stuck on a cruise ship together turns out to be just the thing to force them to re-connect.
Admittedly, it's a bit forced the way they GET both people on to the cruise ship - supposedly Rachel invites her father along after they get drunk together, but I kept wondering, is that what really happened? She doesn't remember, and that's what her father told her, but how do we know that he's telling the truth? Amazingly, the film never even goes there, because there are plenty of other secrets and family dramas to deal with, so it's kind of a moot point. Still, I suspect that her father, Harry, took advantage of the situation and invited HIMSELF on the cruise, when he realized how drunk his daughter was. But, I guess it really doesn't matter, all that matters is that they cruised together and ended up working things out.
Seth Rogen plays a very nice man from Canada on the cruise, who Rachel hooks up with, and I really would have liked to see him used more. No spoilers here, but he's mostly absent after a certain point, and that's a damn shame. Rogen's wife directed the film, but I guess she understands better than most people that's he funnier in small doses? His character had great chemistry with Rachel, but I guess that only gets you so far.
Harry talks a lot about his "partner", Gabe - and Rachel first assumes this means that he's gay, only he's not. But is he, though? Kelsey Grammer's show "Frasier" was often mistaken for being a show about a gay man, so the writers often had to show him dating a lot of beautiful women to compensate - still, many chose to see the film as a show about gay men, Frasier and his brother Niles, because they both acted so professional, neat and non-macho. People are going to read between the lines if they want to - but in the case of "Like Father", would it have been that bad if Harry WERE gay, and Gabe had been his life partner, not just his business partner? Hey, you can still read the film that way if you want to - it feels a bit like a lost opportunity in the script.
Also starring Kristen Bell (last seen in "CHIPS"), Seth Rogen (last heard in "The Lion King"), Paul W. Downs (last seen in "Rough Night"), Zach Appelman, Leonard Ouzts (last seen in "Set It Up"), Blaire Brooks (last seen in "Demolition"), Anthony Laciura, Mary Looram, Brett Gelman (last seen in "Lemon"), Lauren Miller Rogen, Jon Foster (last seen in "Life as a House"), Kimiko Glenn (last seen in "Can You Keep a Secret?"), Danielle Davenport, Wynter Kullman, Elisabeth Ness, Brian McCarthy (last seen in "Paterson"), Keilly McQuail, Jen Zaborowski, Brittany Ross, Marco Naggar, Amber Hodgkiss, Lenny Jacobson (last seen in "Jobs'), Ejyp Johnson, with archive footage of Goldie Hawn (last seen in "Snatched"), Kurt Russell (last seen in "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood").
RATING: 6 out of 10 assigned table mates
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