Review: De Niro returns to grumpy dad mode in likeable comedy About My Father

PG, 90 minutes

3 stars

Robert De Niro has spent quite a bit of time in recent years working in what I hope are well-paying comedies.

Sometimes the results are decent, like Meet the Parents. Other times, you get films like The Family and The Big Wedding that are painful to watch - not just unfunny, but a waste of a great talent.

I went into the film with trepidation but am happy to report it's not bad. It's uneven and a lot of it is familiar, but it's likeable with some genuinely funny moments.

It does suffer from tonal lurches, mixing character comedy and attempts at poignancy with gross-outs. The film rushes along from one scene to the next, as though director Laura Terruso is afraid we'll lose interest.

About My Father stars and was co-written by comedian Sebastian Maniscalco in what appears to be a quasi-autobiographical story. Salvo (De Niro) is a successful Chicago hair stylist who emigrated from Sicily many years ago. He's the type of tough, gruff father who puts great emphasis on hard work and little on emotion. Now, Salvo is widowed and still working - he saves the charm for his female clientele - and his son Sebastian (Maniscalco) has a good job as a hotel manager. All of this and more is related by Sebastian in voiceover - too much of it, really.

Sebastian's girlfriend is from a quite different background: Ellie (Leslie Bibb) is an artist whose wealthy, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant family came over on the Mayflower.

When she invites him to spend the July 4 holiday weekend with her family, Sebastian decides he might use the occasion to pop the question. But he needs his mother's wedding ring. And Salvo wants to suss out his potential in-laws before handing it over.

Ellie suggests Salvo accompany them, and Sebastian is perturbed - how will his blunt, working-class father go down in a privileged, high-toned milieu?

Her parents are Bill (David Rasche), who owns posh hotels, and politician Tigger (Kim Cattrall) - the kind of well-mannered WASPs familiar from many a previous movie and sitcom. Ellie's older brother Lucky (Anders Collins) is well nicknamed - he's a druggy, entitled wastrel - and younger Doug (Brett Dier) is a spacey type into chakras and sound bowls.

The culture clashes that ensue are fairly predictable and sometimes feel dated: for example, would Salvo really be so insistent on paying at the country club? A longtime, award-winning women's hair stylist would surely be familiar with some aspects of rich people's culture.

There's a big slapstick set piece with Sebastian's clumsy antics on a flyboard rider that ends with his shorts falling down.

When Salvo makes an Italian dinner for his hosts there's a nice double payoff.

There are signs of a smarter, better movie, usually in the quieter character moments: Salvo and Tigger discovering they're both armed services veterans; Sebastian and Salvo's nightly ritual of spraying and walking through cologne and their shared jokes about the excesses of the rich.

Salvo's nocturnal encounter with Doug feels like it's supposed to be a turning point but is too brief and uncertain in tone, being neither funny nor poignant. The aim seems to be the latter, but it doesn't quite work.

A lot of the movie plays off De Niro's "resting bitch face" (as described in the dialogue) and in making him look silly (in shorts and, when seen younger, with a ponytail) but he's as game as ever, though the part doesn't tax him.

Maniscalco and Bibb make a likeable couple and the other actors are fine, given they don't have a lot to do.

This is a pleasant diversion that feels like it could have been a bit more.