Father's Day Times Two
This Movie Is No Holiday

For years Hollywood has been begging two of America's biggest comedians to do a film together. In fact, Robin Williams and Billy Crystal have been eager to do it, but never found the right script. Then Crystal saw the French film Les Comperes, an offbeat farce about two men looking for a boy whom one of them may have fathered. When Crystal approached Williams with the film, they both knew this was the script they had been seeking. They were wrong.

Father's Day suffers from poor translation. Something that is funny to the French is not always funny to Americans. This is not the fault of the actors as much as it is the fault of the writing. Even when a great French film is Americanized, the results are often under whelming. For proof watch The Birdcage and compare it to the original La Cage aux folles.

Fortunately, Crystal and Williams have impeccable timing and work well together. If not for the occasional jag away from the written script, Father's Day would be a candidate for straight-to-video. Evidently, they thought they could ad-lib often and use the script as a basic framework to showcase their improvisational talents. Unfortunately, the story keeps getting in the way.

The story begins when Colette (played by the wooden Nastassja Kinski) searches out her old boyfriend Jack (Crystal) for help in finding her runaway son. She hasn't seen Jack in 17 years and tells him he may be the father of her son, Scott (Charlie Hofheimer). When Jack is unwilling to help her, she searches out another old flame, a dejected writer named Dale (Williams). Dale immediately rushes to her rescue filled with an overwhelming sense of purpose. When Dale and Jack realize they are looking for the same boy, they join forces to help the son they never imagined they had.

Even if one can get past the ridiculous premise of this movie, the story is so bogged down by boring secondary plots it is difficult to stay interested. Williams and Crystal do an excellent job of bringing their own quirky styles to the script, but such outrageousness often breaks character. I found it especially difficult to believe Dale would do some of the outrageous things Williams is famous for, considering his character is written as an oversensitive, fragile artist.

One review for this movie questioned the timing when Father's Day was released the same weekend as Mother's Day. Having waited until June to see it, I can not say it plays any better now. Father's Day has too much competition this summer, and is likely to be lost among the summer blockbusters.

MY RATING: 3 out of 10.

RATED: PG-13
RUN TIME: 101 min.