The Thing About My Folks is a crowd-pleasing and heart-string pulling moment for the audience. Peter Falk and Paul Reiser play the perfect complex father son relationship. It’s easy to fall into the fantasy that they really could have experienced every trial and tribulation throughout childhood and into maturity.
The Thing About My Folks
2 Stars
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The Thing About My Folks is a crowd-pleasing and heart-string pulling moment for the audience. Peter Falk and Paul Reiser play the perfect complex father son relationship. It’s easy to fall into the fantasy that they really could have experienced every trial and tribulation throughout childhood and into maturity.
Sam (Peter Falk) played the emotionally absent father who spent most of Ben’s (Paul Reiser) childhood working and keeping the family financially comfortable. Sam finds himself at Ben’s door confused to why his wife of 40-years left a goodbye not on the fridge. Ben starts calling his sisters trying to find where is mother may have ran off to. The next day he ends up on an unexpected road trip with his father. The two begin hashing out Ben’s childhood memories ending with a very touching and undelivered letter Ben had taken from his mom’s drawer as a small child. The letter was never meant to reach Sam, but Ben had kept it a secret all these years. He pulled it out to prove to his father that he had been emotionally and physically distant from the family, explaining why his mom had ran off. The reading of the letter ignited the film into truth, Ben explained the needs he had as a boy wanting to go fishing and camping with his father and do all the things that a father and son are suppose to do together. He also let Sam know that his mom used him as an emotional substitute for his father’s emotional shortcomings.
The two go on a mini adventure trying to make up for lost time, fishing, hitting on the ladies, line dancing, starting bar fights and yes, finally sleeping under the stars. The trip was cut short when Ben reported home and found that his mom is in the hospital. They had found out that she did try to venture out on her own taking a short vacation at the beach, but the illness that she had kept from her family took a turn for the worse and planted her straight into the hospital. A touching moment between Ben’s parents made him realize that true love, even though hard at times and not always perfect, is everlasting. This made Ben take a step back and a second look at his parent’s relationship and his own, realizing that everything can’t be 100% all of the time, but can be perfect in its own way.
The Thing About My Folks is a very adult Hallmark moment type of film. Paul Reiser put a great deal of his heart, soul, and personal memories into this adventure he wrote specifically for Peter Falk. The film will draw a very specific demographic, those who fall into this category will enjoy it immensely. Sadly, The Thing About My Folks is so specific that it will not reach outside of its little niche.