| Universal Pictures | Release Date: November 10, 1989 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
|
Positive:
5
Mixed:
8
Negative:
4
|
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Critic Reviews
A well-made, strong three-generation saga that deals with a number of interesting - and sometimes uncomfortable - topics. [27 Oct 1989, p.3F]
The film is mostly Lemmon's in a quietly stunning performance you frankly didn't know he had in him. [27 Oct 1989, p.29p]
Dad is something of a sitcom soap opera in which tragic and desperate things happen, and the participants can always snap out a one-liner for the occasion.[28 Oct 1989, p.C08]
The director spends nearly two hours groping for a message, but never finds it, mostly because his conflicts rise and fall in 30-minute segments -- like a Family Ties episode. [27 Oct 1989, p.G5]
If the filmmakers were after a kind of Terms of Endearment for men, they didn't get it. Instead, revel in ''golden-agers'' Lemmon and Dukakis, and have a good cry. And shed an extra tear for a golden film opportunity lost. [27 Oct 1989, p.4D]
Nothing in Dad moves below the surface. When the inevitable tragedies come, they take their expected forms. And because we have at least some susceptibility and human feeling, we give the expected response. What we are responding to, though, is not so much the film as the issues it raises.
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Yes, it's got painful and funny moments, but by the time it's all over, I was worn out coping with all Dad's manifold transformations. [28 Oct 1989, p.C3]
There’s certainly much that’s funny, warm and endearing about Dad, which, based on William Wharton’s novel, deals with the familiar theme of a grown child resolving his sense of duty toward an ageing parent. Unfortunately, prolonged tilling of that emotional terrain and seemingly endless verbalization of feelings diminish most of what’s good about the film.
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Goldberg has honorable intentions. But like Tammy Faye's make-up, it's impossible to see beneath his movie's overwrought facade. [27 Oct 1989, p.7]
A the start, Lemmon has vanished almost totally into his role, but soon he's so insufferably perky and boyish and obliging that you feel he deserves the puling lines that Goldberg gives him.
Dad, showcasing Jack Lemmon in a rubber wrinkle mask (he looks like an elderly E.T.), would no doubt have won more Emmy awards for Goldberg had it aired on the tube, but on screen, it's a tearjerking embarrassment.
It's a deeply, creepily dishonest piece of work. [27 Oct 1989, p.G]
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