Date: Fri 30-May-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: SHANNO

Quick Words:

Playing-Father's-Day-Crystal

Full Text:

(rev "Father's Day" for Now Playing, 5/30/97)

Now Playing-

An Odd Celebration Of Fatherhood

By Trey Paul Alexander III

It took little coaxing to get me interested in seeing Father's Day , the first

big screen comedy to pair longtime friends Robin Williams and Billy Crystal.

The tantalizing prospects of having these two funnymen sharing the same space

(Note: They both appeared in Hamlet , but not together) are just too rich to

ignore. Yet only occasionally is this potential realized in a movie hampered

by a mundane and meandering plot and an even murkier message.

The premise of Father's Day , currently at the Crown Cine in Danbury, is

fairly clever. The married mother (Nastassja Kinski) of a teenage runaway

enlists the help of two former lovers by telling each one he is the lost boy's

father. She implores them to assist her, and the two men - one, a married

lawyer (Crystal), the other a single, depressed playwright (Williams) - thus

decide to take up the hunt and eventually join forces. As they search for the

teen, a punk rock groupie in lovestruck mode over a girl, they also do battle

over which is the real father.

Instead of unleashing Williams and Crystal, the film surprisingly ties them

down with a plot that works too hard to keep the narrative going. They find

the kid fairly early... then lose him. They coincidentally happen upon the kid

again... then lose him again. They find out the kid has gotten himself in with

the wrong crowd and must make amends. While all this is going on, the movie

also entertains a pointless subplot that subjects Kinski's husband (Bruce

Greenwood), also scouting for the boy, to all sorts of indignities.

The good news is the movie does have its moments. Williams and Crystal

occasionally strike the perfect pitch of well-tuned comedy pair: Williams,

playing the neurotic, unsure writer, as the loony one; and Crystal, playing

the sarcastic, buttoned-up wise guy, as the straight man. Some of the best

scenes center around the two as traveling companions, both in the car

(Williams periodically imagines he has hit a pedestrian) and as airplane

passengers (Williams, surprise, surprise, is afraid of flying). This is one

odd couple that certainly mines at least a few laughs out of its

apples-and-oranges pairing.

Also, keep your eyes peeled during the film's climax for a super cameo. No

fair telling who the person is, but suffice to say the appearance makes for a

neat gag and one that is, as Williams' character would mutter, "richly

bizarre."

Father's Day is a remake of a 1984 French farce, Les Comperes , which starred

Gerard Depardieu. It also has thematic similarities with Three Men and a Baby

, also a remake of a French comedy. Both films feature men of stunted

emotional growth who have apparently hit the ceiling of their maturity levels

until faced with the notion of fatherhood. The introduction of this element

thus forces the characters to re-examine themselves and their lives. The

Crystal-Williams duo, in the case of Father's Day , find both meaning and

redemption in the search for their alleged son.

Yet this is one of the rather troubling aspects of this comedy, which was

written by the team of Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel ( City Slickers ). Just

as Ganz and Mandel tried to hit some poignant notes regarding middle age

crises amid the yuks in City Slickers , here they attempt to wax sentimental

about parenthood during lulls in the hilarity. But their attempt at a

family-friendly message is often too self-centered. One character utters, "The

idea of being someone's father makes me feel good," and thus captures the

essence of a mind-set that is interested in what fatherhood does for self, not

the self-sacrifice which must essentially define fatherhood.

Father's Day is rated PG-13 for occasionally strong profanity and frequent

suggestiveness.