Like Father
Aug. 16th, 2018 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI almost didn’t watch the new Netflix original film Like Father because the trailer made it look dire, but in the end the lure of Kristen Bell was too strong and I watched it anyway and it was far less stupid than the trailer made it look.
Now I don’t want to oversell this movie - I don’t think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much if I hadn’t gone in with “Well if Kristen Bell isn’t enough to save it, I can always stop watching” expectations - but it’s much better than its trailer makes it look. The basic premise is that after Rachel (Bell) is jilted at the altar, she heads out for a night of drinking with her estranged father Harry, which somehow ends with the two of them taking the honeymoon cruise that Rachel intended to take with her new husband.
I realize this sounds like a set-up for a comedy but honestly the movie is not very interested in comedy and it works much better if you approach it expecting fairly low-key drama despite the zany premise.
Things I liked about this movie, in no particular order:
1. I think I would actually hate going on a cruise but this makes it look super fun, and also like it involves a never-ending delicious buffet.
2. For a while it seemed like the movie was heading toward a romantic subplot between Rachel and another passenger (played by Seth Rogen, who is married to the director Lauren Miller Rogen, another reason I hesitated about watching the movie), but instead it has a brief-rebound-fling subplot and honestly it was super refreshing not to waste loads of time on a romance when the real meat of the movie is Rachel’s relationship with her absentee father.
2.a. The review in The Atlantic complained that this subplot is “mostly around to show the icy depths of Rachel’s cold heart,” I guess because she… made Seth Rogen briefly kind of sad… by not being ready to jump right into a full-blown romantic relationship literally days after being jilted at the altar?
Seth Rogen swiftly finds a different woman to have a fling with, by the way. Does this fickleness show the icy coldness of his heart?
3. Does the movie soft-pedal the difficulties of re-creating a relationship between a father and the adult daughter he abandoned when she was five? Probably yes. But on the other hand it’s much less sappy than the trailer made it look, and not at all inclined to harp on forgiveness; even as Harry offers an explanation for his disappearance, both he and the movie know that no explanation could possibly excuse his actions. Rachel and Harry may create a relationship now, as adults, but that’s not going to make up for his absence during her childhood. At the end of the movie when Harry tells Rachel “I love you,” she doesn’t say it back.
4. One thing I particularly liked is that we don’t have to just take Harry’s word for it that he’s changed and won’t abandon Rachel again if the going gets tough. Over the course of the movie, we discover that his business partner Gabe, who was also his best friend, recently died of early-onset Alzheimer’s - and Harry went bankrupt looking after him as the disease progressed. If he can make such a sacrifice for a friend, he’s clearly learned enough about love and commitment that he might be able to be a good friend to his daughter, too.
5. There’s also a gay couple who sits at their table during the cruise, who are delightful in their own right, but also provide the important service of assuring us that homophobia is not the reason the movie doesn’t make Harry & Gabe a gay couple.
6. I actually super liked the fact that Harry and Gabe were “just” friends, because it’s rare for a movie to treat a platonic relationship as meaningful in that way. And also the movie could have treated the whole thing as really rather pathetic - Harry’s life is so barren that his only real friend is his business partner, God - but instead the moment when we learn about Gabe’s death is redemptive: it shows how Harry has changed.
7. The title Like Father is really a reference to Rachel and Harry’s shared obsession with work: Harry abandoned Rachel in part because of the siren call of work, while Rachel’s fiance jilts her at the altar because he discovers that she has even brought her cell phone to their wedding (and was late walking down the aisle because she was discussing an ad campaign with a client as she waited for the wedding march to play).
It makes the career-woman-jilted-at-altar plotline less sexist - both Rachel and Harry have fucked up their lives for their careers. But both of them have also found joy and meaning through their careers, too: Rachel genuinely loves her job. It’s not destroying her life because its inherently soul-sucking, but because her relationship with it is so obsessive.
8. There’s a scene set at a really beautiful pool beneath a waterfall in Jamaica and if I could have walked into the screen to go for a swim, I would have. The characters could have continued having their emotional crisis off to the left somewhere. I would have just soaked in the peace of the waterfall and it would have been great.
Now I don’t want to oversell this movie - I don’t think I would have enjoyed it nearly as much if I hadn’t gone in with “Well if Kristen Bell isn’t enough to save it, I can always stop watching” expectations - but it’s much better than its trailer makes it look. The basic premise is that after Rachel (Bell) is jilted at the altar, she heads out for a night of drinking with her estranged father Harry, which somehow ends with the two of them taking the honeymoon cruise that Rachel intended to take with her new husband.
I realize this sounds like a set-up for a comedy but honestly the movie is not very interested in comedy and it works much better if you approach it expecting fairly low-key drama despite the zany premise.
Things I liked about this movie, in no particular order:
1. I think I would actually hate going on a cruise but this makes it look super fun, and also like it involves a never-ending delicious buffet.
2. For a while it seemed like the movie was heading toward a romantic subplot between Rachel and another passenger (played by Seth Rogen, who is married to the director Lauren Miller Rogen, another reason I hesitated about watching the movie), but instead it has a brief-rebound-fling subplot and honestly it was super refreshing not to waste loads of time on a romance when the real meat of the movie is Rachel’s relationship with her absentee father.
2.a. The review in The Atlantic complained that this subplot is “mostly around to show the icy depths of Rachel’s cold heart,” I guess because she… made Seth Rogen briefly kind of sad… by not being ready to jump right into a full-blown romantic relationship literally days after being jilted at the altar?
Seth Rogen swiftly finds a different woman to have a fling with, by the way. Does this fickleness show the icy coldness of his heart?
3. Does the movie soft-pedal the difficulties of re-creating a relationship between a father and the adult daughter he abandoned when she was five? Probably yes. But on the other hand it’s much less sappy than the trailer made it look, and not at all inclined to harp on forgiveness; even as Harry offers an explanation for his disappearance, both he and the movie know that no explanation could possibly excuse his actions. Rachel and Harry may create a relationship now, as adults, but that’s not going to make up for his absence during her childhood. At the end of the movie when Harry tells Rachel “I love you,” she doesn’t say it back.
4. One thing I particularly liked is that we don’t have to just take Harry’s word for it that he’s changed and won’t abandon Rachel again if the going gets tough. Over the course of the movie, we discover that his business partner Gabe, who was also his best friend, recently died of early-onset Alzheimer’s - and Harry went bankrupt looking after him as the disease progressed. If he can make such a sacrifice for a friend, he’s clearly learned enough about love and commitment that he might be able to be a good friend to his daughter, too.
5. There’s also a gay couple who sits at their table during the cruise, who are delightful in their own right, but also provide the important service of assuring us that homophobia is not the reason the movie doesn’t make Harry & Gabe a gay couple.
6. I actually super liked the fact that Harry and Gabe were “just” friends, because it’s rare for a movie to treat a platonic relationship as meaningful in that way. And also the movie could have treated the whole thing as really rather pathetic - Harry’s life is so barren that his only real friend is his business partner, God - but instead the moment when we learn about Gabe’s death is redemptive: it shows how Harry has changed.
7. The title Like Father is really a reference to Rachel and Harry’s shared obsession with work: Harry abandoned Rachel in part because of the siren call of work, while Rachel’s fiance jilts her at the altar because he discovers that she has even brought her cell phone to their wedding (and was late walking down the aisle because she was discussing an ad campaign with a client as she waited for the wedding march to play).
It makes the career-woman-jilted-at-altar plotline less sexist - both Rachel and Harry have fucked up their lives for their careers. But both of them have also found joy and meaning through their careers, too: Rachel genuinely loves her job. It’s not destroying her life because its inherently soul-sucking, but because her relationship with it is so obsessive.
8. There’s a scene set at a really beautiful pool beneath a waterfall in Jamaica and if I could have walked into the screen to go for a swim, I would have. The characters could have continued having their emotional crisis off to the left somewhere. I would have just soaked in the peace of the waterfall and it would have been great.
