An excruciatingly heartfelt performance from Patton Oswalt carries this high-concept indie picture from writer-director James Morosini. It’s a film that genuinely does take the comedy of embarrassment to a new level. Morosini says that it’s based on a real incident in his own life; I can believe it. You couldn’t make it up. There is a stranger-than-fiction authenticity to the whole horrifying mess, in which Morosini cleverly uses real home-movie footage of his own childhood. The final 15 minutes have to be watched through your fingers.
Oswalt plays a well-meaning but weak and foolish guy called Chuck who has been a terrible husband (he’s now divorced) and a terrible deadbeat dad, having let his son down all his life. The son is twentysomething Franklin, played by Morosini, who is in treatment for depression and living with his mom Diane (Amy Landecker). Infuriated by the way his deeply unreliable and whiny dad is never there for him, Franklin refuses to take his calls and blocks him on social media. And so in desperate despair, Chuck fakes the online profile of an attractive young woman to contact his son – “catfish” him, essentially – and stay in touch, using the photograph of a local diner waitress called Becca (Claudia Sulewski).
Chuck ruthlessly strikes up an online chat with his poor, lonely, vulnerable son in this sexy fake persona, encouraging him not to be so hard on his dad, and this “Becca” invites him to come see her, purely so Chuck can take him there on a road trip, allowing them to bond. Chuck has a half-baked plan for Becca to break up with Franklin somewhere on the way once the all-important father-son bond has been re-established.
His scheme is a masterpiece of unthinkably intimate abuse and taboo-breaking horror, and Oswalt’s face is a picture of flinching anxiety, self-delusion and self-hate. However grotesquely culpable Chuck has been, you find yourself wanting to hug him. It’s a clever comic trick to bring off.
• I Love My Dad is released on 23 January on digital platforms.
