I Love My Dad (2022 | USA | 90 minutes | James Morosini)
“The following actually happened. My dad asked me to tell you it didn’t.” These are the first words that we see as James Morosini opens his autobiographical film. It’s one that he writes, directs, and has cast himself in the lead role, and as the story unfurls in ever-excruciating waves of cringe-inducing parental behavior, audiences will likely cling to this disclaimer in escalating disbelief about the veracity of these claims. As I squirmed through the hour and a half, I frequently found myself wondering about the therapeutic value of a thirty-year-old portraying himself at age seventeen to relive a terrible chapter in his own life. For his sake, I also hoped that the opening lines were themselves untrue.
As the film opens, teenaged Franklin (Morosini) is “graduating” from a residential program for attempted suicide survivors, announcing to his therapy group that he has decided to cut his oft-absent, ever-disappointing, father out of his life. Blocking him on social media and on his phone, he hopes to get a fresh start upon his return home with his mother (Amy Landecker). However, while this gives him much needed space, his estranged father (Chuck played with limited range by Patton Oswalt) is heartbroken when his son disappears from his Facebook wall and his calls go straight to voicemail. Discussing his son’s online vanishing with a friend from work (Lil Rel Howery, ever the voice of reason in this nightmare movie), the aggrieved dad gets the idea to set up a fake profile to keep an eye on his kid.
This, in and of itself, is a gross concept, but it’s made all the worse at every turn. Chuck steals the identity of Becca, an attractive waitress at his local cafe, creates a spare, friendless profile, and makes a friend request. His kid is somewhat skeptical, but he’s also a lonely, depressed, and horny teenage boy in the 2010s so of course Franklin accepts. Morosini tries to have fun with the concept — showing each character’s imagined versions of their interactions — but as I found it nearly impossible to find any humor in even the early scenes of their online friendship let alone the direction that all things inevitably turn on the internet.
The film sets up Chuck as a long-term loathsome person, self-centered, unreliable, and always willing to cheat for his own gains. His work friend and work girlfriend (Rachel Dratch) repeatedly tell him that what he’s doing to get back into his son’s life is repulsive, but he’s too selfish to listen, making Oswalt’s occasional attempts to convey discomfort at catfishing his son seem utterly and appropriately unsympathetic. That’s more than fair, from a directorial decision, particularly when (if) these offenses were perpetrated upon you. But it makes for an increasingly tough hang without a lot of redeeming value, particularly given the undercurrent of Franklin’s recent struggles with mental health and recent attempts at self-harm.
Perhaps we’re meant to believe that Chuck’s heart is in the right place by wanting to get to know his son. But aside from the shock value, there isn’t enough to invest in either character as a real person. So by the time we’ve followed them on a road trip to meet an imaginary internet girlfriend, complete with stomach-turning depictions of father-son cyber-sexting the predictably disastrous denouement couldn’t come soon enough. The existence of the film and a brief ambiguous coda suggests some form of reconciliation for the real life pair, which itself is some sort of miracle, or testament to the power of owning your own story.
I Love My Dad premiered at SXSW Film on March 12 2022 in the Narrative Feature Competition. Be sure to check out all the SXSW 2022 Sunbreak Coverage