“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.
