I Love My Dad Review: Oswalt Is A Desperate Father In Cruel Dark Comedy [SXSW]

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In writer-director James Morosini’s I Love My Dad, Patton Oswalt plays a desperate father who wants to reconnect with his teenage son. While the premise and the execution play out like a dark comedy, the film is deeply uncomfortable to watch. Sure, Morosini’s film knows exactly what it is, but there is also an off-putting sense of unease and manipulation that is hard to stomach. I Love My Dad is about a horrible person and, while no film has to be a moral compass for anyone, the comedy is more disturbing than funny.

Morosini plays Franklin, a teenager who is leaving a mental health facility following an attempted suicide. To create boundaries between himself and his absent, self-involved, excuse-making father Chuck (Oswalt), Franklin blocks him on all of his social media accounts. Frustrated that he can no longer keep tabs on his son, Chuck creates a fake Facebook account using the identity of Becca (Claudia Sulewski), a waitress at a local diner Chuck only met once. Franklin is still emotionally raw, so it doesn’t take long for him to start opening up to “Becca." Chuck keeps up the ruse, but he finds it increasingly more difficult once Franklin expresses a desire to meet Becca face-to-face or when they start sexting each other furiously.

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When it comes to parent-child relationships, there is a lot of expected forgiveness geared toward the adults who inflict trauma or generally bad behavior upon their children. In this instance, Chuck carries on pretending to be Becca instead of putting in the work to be there for his son. Franklin creates boundaries Chuck doesn’t respect, and the end of the film suggests they may be able to mend their relationship despite all that