Father's Son

The father is a narcissist. He's cold, filled with stories of his own childhood, remote, and short-tempered. The mother is a good wife and a weak person. The son -- well, we're not sure. When the movie opens, he has returned for vacation from a military school to which he's been sent. He indeed is something of a brat.

But he is lonely, looking for his father's approval, which is not forthcoming. The family maid is the one who understands him best. (Best, that is, until a very improbably acted Scandinavian fish seller takes him under his wing.) The actor playing the boy bears an uncanny resemblance to Jane Wyman at about the same period. This is not especially attractive and the audience is not crazy about him. But we feel for him.

It's a message picture of a type that wasn't being made yet. It is an early draft of the more trenchant "On the Loose," though the unfeeling parent there have a teen-aged daughter rather than a son who apparently is meant to be about 12.

It left me feeling sad and downcast. Many of us had had fathers like this one.

The musical score is extremely annoying. It is perky and upbeat, even as the story grows more and more sad and the characters more and more at their wits' end.

Father's boy wasn't really a good movie. However, I can't really say that I hated. It was just an average sitcom-type movie, but sitcoms are still mostly enjoyable, even when average.

Things I liked about this movie: -It was short and sweet. It moved along at a good pace, and it was less than an hour long so it never dragged.

-Acting was mostly good.

-Characters were mostly fully realized, even if they were stock. I'd rather have a cliché character than a completely bland one.

-Had a good musical score. It wasn't a masterpiece, but it helped with the happy atmosphere of the movie.

-The comedy wasn't terrible. No belly laughs, but I've seen way worse.

Things I disliked about this movie: -Like I said before, there was no belly laughs in the movie. None of the gags were very memorable or imaginative, they were just there. Nothing above sitcom standards.

-And like I keep saying, this was just a sitcom. There was nothing cinematic about, nothing that justified putting it on the big screen. The plot could've been used on a thirty minute sitcom on the radio back then. In fact, being less than one hour, this just barely qualified as a feature film. It's like the writer just wanted to write a screenplay to pay rent rather than putting effort into making a classic movie.

I wouldn't really recommend it to anybody, unless if it happens to be on TCM and nothing else is on. Again, it's only a little under an hour, so you won't be wasting THAT much time.