I Love My Dad

               What would you do to be in your kid’s life? For eighteen years or so our kids rely as well as look up to us as parents. At some point though they start to see us for who we are which will either pull them closer or push them away. The worst case scenario is on full display in James Morosini’s new film I Love My Dad as well as serving as a detailed blueprint for what NOT to do as a parent.

                Chuck (Patton Oswalt) seems like a pretty lonely man, a man who wants to be in his son’s life so much that he stalks his Instagram account. For Franklin ( James Morosini) his dad can be a little over bearing and after a failed suicide attempt he is now in therapy, Franklin has also decided to block his dad on social media. Things were not always this way, as a kid Chuck would do anything for Franklin, even if he had to lie as we see in the opening scene. At this point Franklin is over his dad’s shit and feels like his life will be better without him. Chuck does not share that opinion and while at a diner he meets a waitress named Becca ( Claudia Sulewski) who he believes could be Franklin’s soul mate. Of course there is a problem, Chuck has just had brief conversations with Becca, but that thought has given Chuck an idea to get back in his son’s life. So Chuck does what any not normal person might do and create a fake Facebook account with Becca’s pictures with a plan to pretend to be her to talk with his son.

This move surprisingly works and Chuck is back in his son’s life, even if it is him pretending to be an attractive younger girl. Morosini who wrote and directed the movie based on something his real dad did to him in order to check in on him after he had blocked him. Telling a story about a father catfishing his son might have some level of difficulty, but Morosini pulls it off with some hilarious results. One way he does that is in the conversations on messenger between Becca and Franklin, in which he has Becca appear to be next to him instead of just on his phone. While that starts at first to just be a clever method to tell the story, the payoff in the end is beyond good. At first Chuck’s plan works too well, but soon he has to cross lines to keep the ruse going that has an end result that was not the intended plan.

 I Love My Dad  is a hilarious look at one of those situations that might come in as a random thought but should never go beyond that. Oswalt and Morosini are fantastic, but it might be Sulewski who turns the tricky role in playing the “pixie dream girl” into something with much more depth. There are some funny twist and turns in this film, as Chuck’s lies gets bigger and with it Oswalt’s performance gets more memorable. I Love My Dad might tell a story of a bizarre father-son dynamic, but because it does it so honestly and without fear that it is hard not to love the end result. Delivering with the laughs with some awkwardness and some heartbreaking moments for good measure, I Love My Dad  will become one of your new cringy favorites.