A film review by Craig J. Koban September 13, 2022

I LOVE MY DAD jjj

2022, R, 90 mins.

Patton Oswalt as Chuck  /  James Morosini as Franklin  /  Claudia Sulewski as Becca  /  Rachel Dratch as Erica  /  Lil Rel Howery as Jimmy  /  Amy Landecker as Diane  /  Ricky Velez as Derek

Written and directed by James Morosini		  

 

 

I watched most of I LOVE MY DAD through my fingers. 

The fact that this is not a horror film - and is in fact a comedy - is telling.   

I'll give writer/director and star James Morosini props for committing to his film's bizarre and frankly unsettling premise with an audaciously determined spirit.  It concerns a father that has been driven to the brink of desperation when it comes to reconnecting with his estranged son, so he decides to steal a real young woman's identity and creates a fake Facebook account with it in order to friend his kid and get closer to him.  

Yeah...wow...just...WOW.

The title cards to I LOVE MY DAD indicate that this is based on a true story in terms of recounting Morosini's own experiences with the catfishing schemes of his own father.  I sincerely hope that much of what transpires in his film is fabricated for dramatic and dark comedic purposes, because if it actually did happen I would be genuinely concerned about Morosini's health and well being.  I LOVE MY DAD is marketed as a breezy family comedy, but the ultra cringe factor that permeates it is cranked up to level 11, and sometimes so much so that making it through the film simple made me ill at ease.  Perhaps that was the point, as Morosini engages with the material with a never-look-back grit.  Very few films that I've seen as of late are simultaneously hilarious and distressing.  I laughed a lot throughout I LOVE MY DAD, and when I wasn't laughing I was experiencing nauseating sensations of pure unease. 

Morosini plays Franklin, a young man that just recently got out of a mental facility after a failed suicide attempt.  His mother Diane (Amy Landecker) is steadfastly by her son's side and sticks with him through thick and thin.  As for Franklin's dad?  He's basically a deadbeat and has been a serious letdown of epic proportions for the emotionally troubled Franklin, and he feels that he was just too aloof and self-serving to be a caring father through the years.  The scene that opens I LOVE MY DAD - a flashback - does a pitch perfect job of quickly encapsulating the character of the father and the strained relationship with his son.  The papa is Chuck (Patton Oswalt), and he and Franklin (when he was just a wee young lad) come across a lost dog in their neighborhood.  Chuck constantly feels a need to find quick ways to make Franklin happy, so he tells him that the pooch is his and they'll immediately adopt.  As they walk home Chuck notices a lost dog sign posted on their block for the very same one he has just given Franklin.  Chuck sneakily grabs the poster and rips it up.  

Yup...he's a real piece of work.

As we flashforward to the present we are re-introduced to Chuck as a divorcee at a go-nowhere office cubicle job.  He has next to no ties or semblance of a relationship with his kid, despite his best - and some would say obsessive - efforts to constantly text, phone, and message him...all...the...time.  Chuck gets a massive blow when it appears that Franklin has blocked him on his social media profiles, which springs this flabbergasted dad into action...and action of the most shockingly extreme.  After a brief encounter with a polite and perky diner waitress named Becca (Claudia Sulewski), Chuck checks out her profile on Facebook and then begins a devious plan: He adopts this woman's identity and creates a bogus Facebook profile of her so that he can friend Franklin.  Because he has so very few friends - and because Becca is very easy on the eyes - Franklin decides to friend this mystery woman back, which leads iso as limitlessly attractive has virtually no friends on the platform and just completely out of the blue reached out to him.  The frazzled Chuck has to think on his feet and drums up a story of how she had to quit FB and then re-start up an account.  

 

 

And let me be blunt - this is just the beginning of a roller coaster ride of massive unpardonable lies that Chuck begins to perpetrate. 

Franklin starts to get closer to this fake Becca and grows fonder by the day of this woman, and all without being none the wiser that she's actually his dad committing fraud of the most perverse kind.  For Chuck, messaging his son daily - albeit, while impersonating a young woman - becomes like a new drug that he can't give up.  As his son gets closer to Becca he begins to crush on her big time, which forces Chuck to go to even larger extremes in maintaining this icky charade.  Morosini does something visually interesting here when it comes to portraying the constant stream of messages between Franklin and Chuck: He doesn't just show the flurry of exchanged texts on their respective smart phones, but he also shows the faux Becca in the flesh interacting with Franklin in male fantasy styled montages.  Even though Franklin hasn't met this girl face to face, his online relationship gets quite tight and intimate to the point where he feels like she could be a real woman standing across from him.  And in these sequences Becca sure seems like the proverbial girl of his dreams: Hot, funny, perceptive, and lending him an empathetic ear whenever he needs.  Then Franklin wants to actually talk to this girl, which leads to Chuck fumbling on the spot for a solution to this problem.  Then, to make matters worse, Franklin decides to connect back with Chuck, but only because he needs him and his car to drive across the country to meet Becca in the flesh.  

Oh.  My.  God. 

Part of the intoxicating allure of I LOVE MY DAD is in witnessing just how far Chuck will take his maddening scheme.  Morosini takes his visualization of Franklin and Becca's online ties even further when he wants to "text-kiss" her, which leads to a painfully hysterical moment that shows Chuck imagining in his mind that his son has materialized in his room and is committed to weirdly locking lips with him.  Trust me when I say that this is not even the creepiest thing that transpires between Chuck and his kid online.  Then Franklin wants to take the courageous deep dive and have "text-sex" with Becca...and...and...I really don't want to relay what happens, other that to say that Chuck - ahem! - finds a way to acquiesce to Franklin's request.  

Now, this all begs a few simple questions: (1) Is Chuck a pathetically deranged pervert or (2) is he just so emotionally fragile and wounded by his lack of access to his son that he chooses the wrong outlet to get close to him?  I think that the key to answering this is the high wire act of a tricky performance by Oswalt himself, who is no stranger at all to playing weird loners with impulse control issues (see the underrated BIG FAN).  He makes Chuck more pathetic and sad than simply evil, and his idea of fatherly love has been channeled into a nightmarish rouse that he knows will not end well, but he simply doesn't know how to end it.  I don't think that Morosini makes Chuck sympathetic at all (his catfishing plan shows a fundamental disregard to his suicidal son's emotional health, not to mention that it shows him no respect when it comes to boundaries...oh...and there's the criminal aspect of it as well!).  This dad is a stone cold liar...and a cheat...and manipulative to the core.  He's shown as a man being given one last chance with his son and he goes for it, but his methods for doing so are corrupt on so many levels.  The fact that Oswalt manages to navigate the psychological complexities of this problematic character without rendering him as a villainous cretin is to his credit; he has never been better in a film. 

The rest of the cast is solid too, especially Morosini playing a version of himself.  He manages to evoke his character's naiveté and vulnerability quite well; you believe that this poor sap could be easily taken advantage of and fooled in equal measure.  Also good is Sulewski in her many scenes as the fake Becca, who has to craft an exaggerated portrait of this near perfect woman that exists in Franklin's subconscious while harnessing dialogue that's born out of Chuck's bumbling efforts to come across like a plausible twentysomething tech savvy woman online.  There's other inspired supporting performances littered through the film, like Rachel Dratch playing Chuck's aggressively hedonistic girlfriend that makes the mistake of joining her boyfriend on his crazy plan.  Then there's Lil Rel Howery as Chuck's co-worker that nonchalantly planted the seed of Chuck's plan in his brain, despite never once thinking that this fool would ever do it.  Everyone on board here in front of and behind the camera commits to the unbridled lunacy of I LOVE MY DAD's deeply unconventional - and frequently stomach churning - father/son narrative.  I think the aforementioned cringe factor will be too much for many viewers to bare, not to mention that I think that Morosini fumbles the ball towards a fairly rushed climax and final moment that never feels truly earned or credible considering all of the complicated stakes leading in.   I LOVE MY DAD is undeniably squirm-inducing, but watching it was like driving by the scene of a horrible accident.  I just couldn't slow down and avert my eyes, but rather compelled myself to observe every detail out of morbid curiosity.  As the film careened more and more out of control the more I wanted to see how far Morosini would take this risky premise.  To his credit, he takes it pretty far.   

Granted, I did a lot of wincing and watching through my fingers, but you get my drift. 

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