Filmed in 2015 and released in the US at the end of 2017, Father Figures is one of those hideously dated bro comedies which one suspects nobody really wanted released in the current climate, and yet here it is whether we like or not. Starring Ed Helms and Owen Wilson, and directed by cinematographer turned director Lawrence Sher, the film has all the subtlety and charm of a rowdy bachelor party without all the fun bits, and that’s not even the most offensive thing about it.
Peter (Helms) and Kyle (Wilson) are fraternal twins who couldn’t be more different if they tried. Peter is a recently divorced and deeply depressed proctologist, while Kyle is the eternally cheerful, “glass is always half full” type, a trait which Peter has been finding increasingly annoying about his brother. Having been brought up by their single mother Helen (Glenn Close) in the knowledge that their father died before they were born, the brothers are shocked to suddenly find out that their dad is alive and well. “Hilarity” ensues when the brothers, armed with very little to go by, decide to go looking for their long lost dad.
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The rest – you guessed it – is a series of badly set up comedy skits in which the duo meet a number of Helen’s former suitors, in order to find out which one of them is the daddy. Staring alongside Helms, Wilson and Close are ex-NFL quarterback Terry Bradshaw as himself and one of the possible candidates, as well as the usually brilliant J.K. Simmons as Roland Hunt, a small time crook whom the duo are convinced is their real father.
The film offers up a ridiculously infantile plot packed full of hideously crude jokes and a storyline so thin that it can’t quite decide what it wants to be. Wilson is cast in a role he has performed time and time again and which, quite frankly, is starting to wear rather thin, while Helms simply looks angry and embarrassed at having to utter such idiotic dialogue. All in all the film offers nothing new or of any value to the comedy genre and winds up looking desperate for cheap laughs at any cost.
On the whole, Father Figures fails to raise so much as a smile, let alone a guffaw, and for that reason alone, the film not only deserves to disappear without a trace to never be heard of again, but should serve as lesson on how not to make a comedy. An amateurish offering from people who are usually capable of far better.
Father Figures is in cinemas from Friday the 16th of February.
