About My Father

We are long past the point of being able to classify Robert De Niro doing comedy as a departure. It’s been forty years since The King of Comedy, thirty-five since Midnight Run, and nearly twenty-five since Analyze This and Meet the Parents. De Niro has been around so long that he’s done everything under the sun over the course of more than 100 feature films. As much of his modern output can be categorized as comedy as not and although you’d think that’d be a chief factor in the universally accepted downturn in his quality of output, he’s earned some critical acclaim when teaming with auteurs as diverse as David O. Russell and Nancy Meyers.

De Niro’s latest comedy — About My Father — sees him filling the titular, but not lead role. The star and co-writer of the film is Sebastian Maniscalco, a veteran Italian-American stand-up comic who you might recognize from supporting roles in movies like Oscar winner Green Book and De Niro’s far superior The Irishman.

Maniscalco plays an eponymous variation on himself, a working-class Chicago hotel manager who is about ready to propose to his girlfriend, artist Ellie (Leslie Bibb). The relationship has been progressing nicely enough for Ellie’s wealthy WASP family to extend an invitation to Sebastian to spend the Fourth of July at their summer home in Virginia. The invitation is further extended to Sebastian’s father Salvo (De Niro), a recently widowed Sicilian immigrant and still beloved hairstylist. Sebastian has fears about introducing his classy and affluent potential in-laws to his hard-headed, cost-conscious Dad, but if the title and poster didn’t already clue you in, Dad’s coming along.

This brand of PG-13 family comedy should be familiar to De Niro and the viewer alike. It’s pretty much Meet the Parents, or rather its extremely lucrative 2004 sequel Meet the Fockers, all over again. That’s a sturdy foundation because the original Meet the Parents remains one of the finest comedies of its kind and a definite highlight among De Niro’s 21st century work.

The inevitable culture clash occurs early and often. Salvo tries to make sense of his son’s girlfriend’s family, with their generational wealth dating back to the Mayflower voyage. Ellie’s older brother (Anders Holm of “Workaholics”) surprises the three guests at the airport with his personal helicopter. Her younger brother (Brett Dier) is into sound bowls and serenading the region’s local wildlife, peacocks introduced to the area by the family’s ancestors. And her parents (David Rasche and Kim Cattrall) have career priorities and financial comfort that perplexes their geriatric guest.

De Niro could do this kind of material in his sleep, but he actually puts effort in here, evidently buying into Maniscalco’s attempt at movie stardom. It’s a noble attempt, with the comic proving to be more at ease as leading man than many a stand-up comic who has tried such a transition before. The father-son dynamic provides enough humor and heart to make the movie go down smoothly with an appealing old school vibe somewhere in between the Fockers trilogy and Steve Martin’s two ’90s Father of the Bride movies.

About My Father never gets too crude or outrageous, which seems consistent with Maniscalco’s stage act. And yet, the biggest laugh at my screening, whose audience predictably skewed older, was the broad gag in which Sebastian loses his swimming trunks and inadvertently flashes his future parents-in-law (but not the viewer). I found the film more enjoyable when its material showed a little more sophistication, whether in throwaway lines or the Salvo-cooked dinner scene that’s presented in part like an acid trip.

Genial comedies like this have not been in fashion at the movies for quite some time and it seems even more foolish for Maniscalco to pin his career ambitions on this than it was for Billy Eichner to try a similar thing with last year’s well-reviewed but poorly-attended gay romcom Bros. In both cases, the results are fairly agreeable and there is plenty of entertainment to be had.