About My Father (2024)

I watched this movie, with Robert DeNiro starring as the curmudgeonly father, on a plane, where I am most forgiving about the quality of a movie, and yet, this is not one that I would recommend. One reviewer called it a movie that "runs the gamut from mediocre to painless with occasional moments of charm." Damning with faint praise. Sebastian is an attractive middle-aged man whose father, Salvo, a widowed hairdresser, holds his late wife's wedding ring in reserve until he can check out whatever family his boy decides to marry into. The moment arrives when he falls in love with Ellie, who, like Sebastian, is in the hotel business and is sunshine and rainbows. Ellie's family came over on the Mayflower, and that sums up their snobbish approach to life. Ellie's mother, Tigger, a senator, and father, Bill, a country-club owner, invite Sebastian to attend the family's annual Independence Day get-together in their exclusive town--they see it as a celebration of the accomplishments of distant relatives rather than a hot dogs and fireworks sort of event. When Sebastian asks his dad for the ring, pop pressures his son into letting him tag along because he needs to vet the new in-laws and because there wouldn't be a movie if he didn't.