05/09/97
MOVIE REVIEW: Father's Day
'Father's Day' doesn't bring home the bacon

By MICHAEL JANUSONIS
Journal-Bulletin Arts Writer

** (out of five)
Starring Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Nastassja Kinski, Charlie Hofheimer. A Warner Bros. picture by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel from the film Les Comperes by Francis Veber, directed by Ivan Reitman. Rated PG-13, contains violence. Running time: 95 minutes.

Teaming America's premier funnymen Robin Williams and Billy Crystal with director Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters, Twins) and writers Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel (City Slickers) in a film based on a hit French comedy must have seemed like a match made in heaven.

Alas, heaven can wait in this tale of two men who are shocked to be told by a long-ago girlfriend that each of them had fathered her son, Scott, 17 years earlier. This news quickly sets them out on a personal mission to find the lad who has run away from home.

Despite the potent artistic combination and the high-concept plot, Father's Day never moves above the simmer stage in the laugh department. Part of the problem is that Williams and Crystal have very different styles of comedy that don't gel.

Williams, a raging physical comedian, doesn't get much of a chance to cut loose here. He shows promise early when he tries on various outfits and voices, trying to come up with something that he thinks will appeal to his long lost son. But his character, Dale Putley, is a whiner and a softie who breaks down at the slightest provocation. When we first meet him, he's about to blow his brains out because he has failed as a writer.



Crystal more cerebral

Crystal is a more cerebral comic, a master of the cynical one-liner. He internalizes his material. True, his Jack Lawrence is a successful lawyer who is very businesslike and astute and is supposed to be the opposite of Dale. But in this case, opposites don't attract, even after they're on the road for a very long time sharing minor adventures.

One of the funniest scenes in the movie -- and something that turns into a running gag -- doesn't involve Williams or Crystal, but another man who is trapped in a port-a-john. He is also looking for Scott because he has been married for many years to the lovely Colette (Nastassja Kinski) who has sent Dale and Jack out on a quest for reasons that later don't make much sense as the plot unfolds.

It doesn't help that the boy, Scott (Charlie Hofheimer), whom Dale and Jack have trailed from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Reno, and who each believes he has fathered, is a zero in the charisma department. Each man searches for special characteristics in Scott's personality that they share, since he looks nothing like either man, but uncover no chemistry at all. Scott seems like a deluded jerk who can't get over the fact that his girlfriend has jilted him on the road for a rock star. He's even whinier than Dale.



A frenzy of head-bashing

Father's Day includes a frenzy of head-bashing, which is Jack's specialty in a fight. There are rock singers and a mosh pit and drug dealers who seem an afterthought to get the plot moving. There's also Mel Gibson in a very funny cameo appearance. Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld has the small role of Jack's unhappy new wife who envisions the worst from the reports she gets from him on the road.