DadCinema: A Brief Overview

You may or may not have read about the upcoming release of World's Greatest Dad — a pitch-black comedy directed by Bobcat Goldthwait (who once upon a time gave us the terrifyingly brilliant Shakes the Clown, aka "The Citizen Kane of Alcoholic Clown Movies") and starring Robin Williams as the title Dad, whose awful son... well, let's just say that if you do a little research, you'll quickly discover just how dark this comedy is. To say I'm excited about it is a profound understatement.

In any case, reading about this movie got me to thinking about other "Dad" films. Where are they, and what do they have to teach us? With that in mind, DadCentric bravely presents a brief overview of  DadCinema. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

• GHOST DAD
Was there really a time when Bill Cosby wasn't insufferable? Honestly, I find that hard to believe — and I grew up in the days when The Cosby Show was the biggest thing on TV. How is that even possible? I'm sure that entire theses have been written linking the unprecedented success of The Cosby Show's genially dull "comedy" to the anesthetizing, feel-good "it's a New Day in America" Reagan era... but honestly, I'm not bright enough to figure out the logistics of anything that complex, and so I'm left stupified by the concept of an impossibly successful comedy series that fails on every subjective level to be funny.

Of course, the series served as a launching pad for a myriad of Cosby enterprises, including the sudden return to popularity of his 70s comedy albums (WTF? Have you ever actually listened to that Noah's Ark bit that's supposed to be the best thing he ever did... without wanting to smash the stereo or stab yourself in the ears, just to make the hurting stop? It goes on for forty minutes, and IT'S NOT FUNNY ONCE), a cottage industry of best-selling books (including one called Fatherhood, of course)... and a handful of terrible, terrible movies. Including Ghost Dad.

Ghost Dad tells the story of a jackass business dude who dies but then has to come back from the dead and bond with his kids even though he's dead. It's kind of like Jack Frost, except that it doesn't feature Michael Keaton as an animatronic snowman and doesn't share a title with another movie about an animatronic snowman that kills people. (Admission: I think I'd enjoy watching Bill Cosby get killed by an animatronic snowman). At the same time, it's kind of like Regarding Henry, which features Harrison Ford as some jackass business dude who has to get shot in the head (but doesn't die) in order to learn how to be nice to puppies and children. By comparison, from what I understand, Bill Cosby actually has to die in Ghost Dad in order to discover the same thing. Advantage: Harrison Ford getting shot in the head.

SUMMARY: Ghost Dad teaches us that being a jackass business dude means that you suck as a dad and are going to die.

• MOM AND DAD SAVE THE WORLD
Once upon a time, someone thought it would be a great idea to spend millions of dollars to put Teri Garr and Jon Lovitz and Jeffrey Jones in a kids/family comedy. "I love it!" said the studio dude. "Kids just can't get enough Lovitz! And Jones can't get enough kids!" (Um... in retrospect, possibly not the best choice as the title Dad.)

What results is a strange and occasionally amusing movie about a dorky suburban couple who get caught up in all kinds of extreterrestrial tomfoolery and, in the end, do indeed save the world from almost certain annihilation. Along the way there are appearances by women with fish heads, a slew of carnivorous mushrooms and Eric Idle, who stops by to pick up a check. Nobody learns any important lessons, with the possible exception of the aforementioned studio dude.

Tragically, there is no sequel to this movie.

SUMMARY: Jeffrey Jones ≠ good father figure.

• FATHER OF THE BRIDE
Remember when Steve Martin made good movies? I know, I know... it feels like a million years ago, but it wasn't. Bowfinger came out only 10 years ago, and that movie was everything The Player was supposed to be about Hollywood but wasn't: funny, viciously insightful, well-written and acted, and then funny all over again. (Come to think of it, Bowfinger may also be the last good movie that Eddie Murphy made. What's up with that?) Since then, though, Martin has starred in a steady stream of boring, safe, "family-friendly" movies that tend to make decent money even as they make us feel embarassed that we ever loved Steve Martin in the first place.

Father of the Bride, a listless remake of a far superior Spencer Tracy movie from 1950, should have served as an early warning sign of the sad direction Martin's career would take. Unlike some of the other, far superior movies Martin was making around the same time - LA Story, My Blue Heaven... even Leap of Faith - this was a career move that screamed pleasant, marketable, and 100% forgettable. Do you know anyone who can quote a line from Father of the Bride? Because I guarantee you know someone who can quote you lines from every other Martin movie mentioned here (except Leap of Faith, even though it was actually okay)(and yes, that someone is me). Why? Because they're vastly more entertaining and memorable movies, with strange and wonderful characters and creative dialogue and unexpected and fun things that happen onscreen that capture our imagination and take us someplace other than our couches, even if just for a little while.

Father of the Bride? Begat Sgt. Bilko. And The Out of Towners. And Cheaper by the Dozen. And The Pink Panther. It's as if this one boring, undead remake became the catalyst that allowed Martin to make dozens of other undead remake comedies that instead of freeing you to laugh sucked the life and energy from your lungs. They're zombie comedies, and I don't mean that in the good sense.

SUMMARY: Your daughter's marriage may be stressful, but even worse is the knowledge that you've unleashed a virus of zombie comedies into the world that will end life as we know it.

• DADDY DAY CARE
No. Fuck no. I'm not going to talk about this movie, beyond the fact that watching it may have defined the most depressing 92 minutes of my life.

SUMMARY: Eddie Murphy should be locked someplace dark and nasty and far, far away, so that he can never make movies again.

• BIG DADDY
Why waste time talking about it when the product description says it all? FATHERHOOD IS BROUGHT TO ANOTHER LEVEL AS ADAM SANDLER EMPLOYS HIS UNIQUE BRAND OF HUMOR TO FACE THE CHALLENGES OF PARENTHOOD. You think that'd be enough to send the public running to the hills, but noooooooooooo... we had to embrace Sandler as a jackass with a heart. And he made eleventy bijillion dollars off it as a result, and as a result we now get bombarded with commercials for crap like Bedtime Stories and Click and Mr. Deeds every couple of months.

And it's not that Sandler doesn't have a heart: once in a blue moon, he actually shows a little depth and skill when he works a real script and a talented filmmaker on a movie like Punch-Drunk Love or Spanglish or The Wedding Singer. But for each one of those there's another craptastic Happy Gilmore remake, or two or three of these Steve Martin/Eddie Murphy-style "family-friendly" nightmares where people grow feelings and learn things that I'd rather punch myself in the head - four or five times - than watch. Ever.

SUMMARY: Even if you don't get shot in the face (take that, Harrison Ford) you can still learn to be nice to children and pretend to be a good father. Which is almost the same thing as actually being a good father.

(Note: this series may or may not continue, depending on how desperate for a topic I am next week. Consider yrselves warned.)