ABOUT MY FATHER – Review

Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco plays a man named Sebastian Maniscalco while Robert De Niro plays his father Salvo, in the comedy ABOUT MY FATHER. Maniscalco and De Niro as father and son are the major delight in this otherwise mildly funny, warm-hearted comedy. It is a comedy about family but not really a family comedy as there are bits of adult humor.

Dad Salvo (De Niro) is a hairstylist (don’t call him a barber!) from a long line of hardworking, hard-scrabble, stoop-postured, Sicilian scowlers, but Salvo left Sicily to immigrate to America to give his son a better life. However, his second-generation Italian-American son has fallen for someone who is not a fellow Italian-American – an artist named Ellie (Leslie Bibb) whose immigrants ancestors came over a little earlier – on the Mayflower. When Sebastian is invited to her family’s big 4th of July weekend celebration at her parents’ posh estate, Salvo, a widower who served in the U.S. military, objects to being left alone on a holiday that means so much to him. But soon-to-be fiancee Ellie has the solution: invite Dad too – which sends Sebastian into a panic at the thought of his opinionated grumbler father coming along for a weekend where Sebastian hopes to impress Ellie’s family. Actually dad Salvo is cool to the idea after first too, not wanting to spend an uncomfortable weekend with the idle rich he disapproves of. But when son Sebastian tells him he intends to propose to Ellie and asks his father for the treasured family ring as her engagement ring, Salvo decides he has come along and determine if her rich family measures up to his standards, which include hard-work, penny-pinching and family-first values.

You get the idea. Father and son are at odds in a fish-out-of-water comedy about working-family guys in the land of the country club. But rather than jokes built around working class Italian Americans or immigrants trying to impress the posh family, ABOUT MY FATHER turns the tables on that old premise of a meet-the-family comedy, and instead pokes fun at the foibles of the very rich. It is still humor built on stereotypes but now it is stereotypes about the pampered, clueless rich who are the target. The comic situation pits father against son and vice versa, with Maniscalco’s character hoping to use the weekend to charm and fit in with his future in-laws, while De Niro sizes up their worthiness to join his family, while grumbles his way through it and disdaining what he considers unacceptable behavior, like ordering off a menu with no prices and keeping peacocks as pets.

Yeah, pretty silly, but there is a little fun in inverting the script for this kind of meet-the-family comedy. Sebastian’s artist girlfriend is more down-to-earth than her family but her quirky, moneyed relatives provide plenty of fodder for comedy, mostly built on familiar stereotypes. Kim Cattrall plays her mom, Tigger McAuthur Collins (yes, Tigger, as in the Winnie the Pooh stories), who is a U.S. Senator. Tigger is just as energetic her namesake but she is also strong-willed, exacting powerhouse. Dad Bill Collins, from an old money family, is a more easy-going personality, but he is also a successful businessman who inherited control of his family’s large, storied luxury hotel chain, which is the big-dog competitor to the rising-star boutique hotel that Sebastian owns and runs. Ellie’s two brothers are their own kinds of messes – Lucky (Anders Holm) is a big-ego screw-up in preppy attire who works for his father, while Doug (Brett Dier) is a sensitive soul dressed in organic fabrics who greets the guests by playing singing bowls and who is generally ignored. Oddly, there is no family member named Tom Collins. How did they miss that one?

Maniscalco and De Niro together are the major highlight and reason to see this light little comedy. As stubborn father and wheedling son, they are a delight together and sometimes even hilarious. De Niro gets to scowl all he wants while Maniscalco does his comedy routine while bouncing off walls in frustration. The supporting cast do well, with Kim Cattrall a stand-out as the blue-blooded, imperious, control-freak Tigger, followed closely by David Rasche as husband Bill who smooths over the ruffled feathers.

Sebastian Maniscalco co-wrote the script and it draws on his stand-up humor enough that it should please fans. The turnabout script is kind of fun, and there are some laughs in there with jokes about loud striped shirts, men in pastel pants, country clubs and peacocks, and jokes aimed at the rich and powerful. But there are also some rather cringe-worthy comedy bits, like one about lost swim trunks, that go on too long.

Otherwise, the humor is light, the plot slight, with a nice little message about the importance of family. This comedy is more mildly funny than laugh out loud but Maniscalco and De Niro are appealing together.

ABOUT MY FATHER opens Friday, May 26, in theaters.

RATING: 2.5 out of 4 stars