Sebastian Maniscalco and Robert De Niro star in 'About My Father', a new comedy based on Maniscalco’s relationship with his father.
Sebastian Maniscalco and Robert De Niro star in 'About My Father', a new comedy based on Maniscalco’s relationship with his father.
New movie About My Father starring Robert De Niro is a deeply personal Italian comedy that’s simply not funny.
Robert De Niro is one of the great screen actors. His name on a film banner can be read as a seal of quality. Unless it’s a comedy. Then it becomes a gamble with 50/50 odds of being a winner.
This week I took that gamble and watched About My Father, a new comedy film starring Robert De Niro and comedian Sebastian Maniscalco.
It seemed like a safe bet. While De Niro was obviously the draw, Maniscalco’s been around a while, done a handful of comedy specials and taken serious turns in the Oscar-winning drama Green Book as well as a supporting role opposite De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s brilliant gangster epic The Irishman.
For his part, De Niro’s had some decent comic roles over the years. Meet the Parents, Wag the Dog, and Analyze This for example. Still, I wouldn’t call him a great comic actor. He tends to play-to-type as a gruff straight-man foil to a comedy partner. And so it is here.
About My Father is based on Maniscalco’s relationship with his father, a staunchly proud Italian immigrant whose parenting style was firmly stuck in the old ways. As well as starring, Maniscalo also co-wrote the film and makes no bones about it being based on his personal experience. There are actual photos of him from baby to child to teen to today throughout the movie and his character is also named Sebastian. He very much took the old advice, ‘write what you know,’ to heart.
The movie, which is available to rent on a handful of streaming services like Neon and Prime Video, is a culture-clash comedy set on Thanksgiving weekend. After years of dating, Sebastian finally gets the invite to spend the holiday with his girlfriend’s family at their holiday home in an exclusive country club. While there, he plans to propose to her.
As well as starring, Sebastian Maniscalo also co-wrote the culture-clash comedy. Robert De Niro plays his father Salvo.
The only hitch in his plan to get hitched is that his father Salvo insists on coming along. He wants to meet and suss out his future in-laws by “looking them in the eyes”. With his working-class background and working-class obsession with the cost of things, Sebastian is rightly worried that his old man will embarrass him. Which, naturally, he proceeds to do from the minute they hop on the helicopter to get there.
The movie follows Sebastian trying to hide his roots, then trying to get his dad to stop being himself, before ultimately realising how unreasonable that request is. Along the way, Salvo embarrasses Seb at every opportunity. The chip on his shoulder preventing him from enjoying himself or the company of his future in-laws.
For such a personal tale About My Father is as bland as a frozen pizza. There’s none of the boisterous Italian spirit or passion in the script. The movie works hard to get all the pieces in place for big comedy set-pieces and the excellent cast is all given moments to shine but it suffers from one unsurmountable problem; It’s simply not funny.
Mercifully, it is short. I laughed once in its 90s minutes, which is an atrocious batting average.
It’s such a waste. Alongside De Niro, is Sex and The City’s Kim Cattrall and Sledgehammer!’s David Rasche as his obscenely wealthy opposites. Leslie Bibb plays the object of Sebastian’s affection and Workaholics star Anders Holm plays her obnoxious trust-fund bro sibling.
But even a cast of this calibre can’t elevate this canned tomato of a film. They certainly give it a shot. Everyone is pretty good but when even an actor of De Niro’s skill and talent is struggling to get a smile you know something’s gone wrong somewhere along the way.
