Dad (1989): A Review (Review #2205)

DAD (1989)

This review is part of the Summer Under the Stars Blogathon. Today's star is Jack Lemmon.

It is inevitable that as an actor ages, his roles shift from son to father to grandfather. Jack Lemmon is no exception. Dad, if memory serves right, was my first exposure to Lemmon as an actor. It has been a long, long time since I have revisited this film. Dad is shamelessly hokey and sentimental. However, it is well-meaning in said hokeyness and sentimentality, so I can see why it is appealing to audiences.  

Jake Tremont (Jack Lemmon) lives a pretty sheltered and henpecked life. His wife Bette (Olympia Dukakis) is firm, rigid and pretty much the boss. Bette does love Jake, but her dominant personality is such that Jake and everyone Bette comes in contact with is rendered pretty powerless. They keep to a solid routine, which is interrupted when Bette suffers a heart attack while they are grocery shopping.

Into this health crisis steps, their son John (Ted Danson) steps in. John, a busy executive, flies back home to California from New York to look in on his parents. His sister Annie (Kathy Baker) and brother-in-law Mario (Kevin Spacey) do their best for both Jake and Bette. Bette continues to insist that all she had was bad indigestion. Jake, who has been rendered pretty much docile by Bette, now finds himself slightly out of sorts without her guidance. 

John soon starts showing Dad how to do the most basic things. Jake does not know how to do laundry. He does not appear to know how to wash dishes. He might have once been a Lockheed employee and amateur racecar driver. Today though, Jake Tremont is a sympathetic well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory. John takes an extended leave of absence to guide his dad into a new lease on life. Jake gets his driver's license back. He starts to go back to bingo. Soon, Jake and John are finding life.

Struggling to find life is John's own son Billy (Ethan Hawke). Billy is drifting through life, having left college to be a beach bum in Mexico. John does his best to guide Billy but sees that after his divorce he has not made Billy a priority.  Bette has returned and is still as chilly as ever. This runs counter to Jake's newfound joie de vivre. That joy of life, however, is short-lived. Jake is diagnosed with cancer. The mere word "cancer" so terrifies Jake that John at first insists that Jake not be told. The doctor ignores this request. The word so triggers Jake that he eventually slips into a coma. 

Eventually, with a better and more caring doctor, Jake emerges out of his catatonic state. Unfortunately, so does his fantasy life. Jake, so beaten down by Bette's unintentionally cruel manner, has created a fantasy life where he, Bette and imagined children live on a farm. Jake also starts living it up by inviting his neighbors to let them babysit and having weekly cultural dinners. Bette does her best to go along with Jake's fantasies and new life. However, it reaches a boiling point where she cannot tolerate what she thinks is total insanity. Will the Tremont family reconcile?

I remember watching Dad, as I said, in a theater. While my memories of the audience are somewhat vague, I do recall that people did respond to the story. For that, I should give credit to screenwriter/director Gary David Goldberg (who adapted William Wharton's novel). Dad is unashamed of playing with the viewer's heartstrings. 

The best example of this emotional manipulation is when John, in a rage about having his request to not use the word "cancer" used, takes Jake out of the hospital. With the late James Horner's music swelling in the foreground, we see John carrying the shivering, shaking, terrified Jake in his arms, the rest of his family following behind. If memory serves right, I think this was filmed in slow-motion.

Another good element of Dad is how the film has subtle moments that are easy enough for the casual viewer to find. Early on, we hear Jake tell John that once the word "cancer" is said, it's pretty much over. That sets us up for when we learn of Jake's diagnosis. However, a better moment is when Jake comes in wearing an old black cap. He tells John that Bette always told him not to wear it inside. He thinks it is because Bette thinks it makes him look "too tough, like Johnny Cash". At the end of Dad, we see Bette wear that cap inside the house. Nothing is said. No one mentions it. However, the message is clear.

Dad, if one thinks on it, is actually Dads. The central story is that of John dealing with Jake. A lot of time is spent showing how Jake and John interact and become friends and supportive of each other. However, Dad can also be about John and Billy. Their own fraught relationship also makes up part of the film. We see their own evolution. Goldberg did well in not have the John/Billy relationship be purely antagonistic. Instead, we see that Billy is at most ambivalent about his own father. He does not hate him. Rather, I would say that John is a shadow to Billy. He does not push John away but does not rush to embrace him. It is their mutual love of Jake that ties them together. It also is the glue that lets them mend their own relationship. 

Dad has some overall solid performances from the cast. Jack Lemmon did what he was asked to do: make Jake Tremont almost childlike in the early section of the film. His character is extremely docile with Bette. We see this again in small moments and gestures. Bette, for example, literally cuts his pancakes. Jake walks behind Bette. While he is cheerful and friendly to the grocery butcher, we see Bette ready to do battle to get the best price on the porkchops. When she has her medical emergency, Lemmon's Jake is tottering and panicking, as if unsure of what to do.

As the film goes on, we see through Lemmon's performance how Jake slowly comes out of his shell. Since the audience sees Jake as a likeable old man, we do end up wanting him to succeed. I do think that Dad infantilized Jake to an almost cartoonish level. It seems so odd that a Lockheed engineer and racecar enthusiast could now struggle to function on his own. And that was before his cancer diagnosis and growing senility. When Jake starts babbling about his imaginary life, the psychiatrist tells John that Jake is "a successful schizophrenic". That is one of the oddest statements that I have heard to describe a nice old man who created a fantasy life that is now bleeding into reality.

I do think that there were a few moments when Lemmon hammed it up. There is a moment when Jake, terrified of something, hides under his bed. John' struggle to get him out seemed to be a bit exaggerated. Overall, though, I think Dad is strong late-era Jack Lemmon.  

Just as Jack Lemmon delivered the performance that he was hired to do, I think the same about Olympia Dukakis as the domineering Bette. Dukakis does not play Bette like a villain. She does love Jake. She also is pretty curt and cutting with everyone, so she is not deliberately cruel. I would not go so far as to say that Bette is well-intentioned. She does find the Tremont men's fashion show hilarious as does her daughter Cathy. However, she is also clearly irritated and barely tolerant of both Jake's growing eccentricity and the family's coddling of it. Things come to a boil during the Japanese-themed dinner.

All Bette wants to do is eat, though one suspects that finds the dishes not to her liking. Jake has asked everyone to wear Japanese clothing, speak as much Japanese as possible and spout of information on various Japanese topics. Bette asks for the rice. Mario, almost delighting in teasing his mother-in-law, insists that she ask in Japanese. She will have none of it and grabs the rice bowl angrily, letting some rice spill over.

To be honest, I side with Bette on this one. It is clear that she is not enjoying any of this. I do not think that her family, outside of Mario, is deliberately pushing her buttons. However, one wonders why there could not be a compromise between how everyone treated Jake and Bette.

Ted Danson, I don't think, matched Lemmon or Dukakis. It was not a terrible performance by any stretch. His John was meant as the "more rational" member who has to become the caretaker. He did well, so I cannot fault him for that. The same goes for Ethan Hawke. He was a bit softer than I remember as Billy. Even when he is angry, he is not raging but quite soft and still. That, like with Danson, is not a bad thing.

The weakest part is Kevin Spacey as Mario. One wonders how he could be "Mario". Kathy Baker was underused as Annie. In a nice twist, Jack Lemmon's real-life son Chris plays Jake in his early years. This was a bit confusing in the beginning. We see the farm and bucolic life. Initially, we think this was Jake's early years. However, it turns out that this is really Jake's fantasy world that has become real to him. 

I do not blame Dad for being emotionally manipulative. I do blame it for being a bit longer than I think that it should be. Like the title character, Dad wants to please and make everyone happy. I cannot say that Dad made me happy. It did, however, please me enough to think well of it. Dad knows what it is and does not pretend to be or do otherwise. 

DECISION: C+