‘PRETTY good, for a movie about death” isn’t really good enough.
The Brit drama “When Did You Last See Your Father?” which is both fussy and clunky from the title on, does contain moments of grace and wit in its portrait of a writer (Colin Firth) named Blake Morrison facing the death of his father (Jim Broadbent) while flashing back to (marginally) happier days in 1962.
As a ’60s teen, Blake gawks at the family’s hottie/Scottie maid and learns to drive while shuddering at the back-slapping bonhomie of his doctor dad, a cheerful imp given to minor scams and (possibly) cheating on his wife. As with all teens, young Blake is convinced the world is about to come to an end – although, as if to bolster his view, the Cuban Missile Crisis is taking place.
Meanwhile, the adult Blake frets about his father never paying him compliments and lurks by the deathbed as the old man fades. Firth is an appealing actor who nevertheless usually looks as though he’s just found out he has run over his own dog. Here he looks as if he’d topple over if a butterfly landed on his shoulder.
Watching him mope through the present has limited appeal, especially as it’s combined with Blake’s cringe-y, whinge-y stance toward the past, when his dad was always (for instance) tricking him into drinking straight vodka, taking him on a rainy camping trip or walking in on the lad as he tried to enjoy a quiet session of self-abuse. “I mean,” huffs the boy, “what kind of a man calls his wife ‘Mummy’?” An Englishman.
These moments should be funnier than they are – the screenplay is by the superb comic novelist David Nicholls – but they’re directed insufferably by the previously talented Anand Tucker (“Hilary and Jackie,” “Shopgirl”) who enforces a tone of nonstop boo-hooing.
Tucker shovels in gummy mounds of mood music, photography that makes everything look as though it’s been shot through a gauze curtain, languid dissolves and dramatic mirror-assisted double exposures. It’s as if Tucker has just received word that dying parents are sad and is determined to blare the news.
Though the film is based on a memoir – how refreshing it is to see a film announce, at the start, “a true story,” without the usual dodge about being “inspired” or “based” in reality – it forgets that being true and being interesting aren’t the same thing.
Blake’s bumbling does carry a bleary sense of confused emotions – presented with an urn of his father’s ashes, he tastes them – and the film wraps up nicely with a sturdy moment of brisk Britishness: “Right. What’s next, then?”
WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER?
Drizzly mourning.Running time: 92 minutes. Rated PG-13 (sexual content, profanity). At the Lincoln Plaza, the Angelika, the Cinemas One Two Three.