Okay, this is a bit different for me.
Ever since I started this film blog – way back in 2019 – I, like all reviewers, reviewed one film at a time. Makes sense – why review two in the same post? That’s just crazy! Different films are different from one another – yes – so, they should be reviewed in separate, individual posts. No brainer.
That all stops today. And, it stops not necessarily because these two films, “You Hurt My Feelings” and “About My Father”, are similar – though, you’ll be surprised by how much they overlap (more on that later) – but because of the way in which these two films have been treated by reviewers. In short, something smells fishy.
“You Hurt My Feelings” takes place among a group of well-educated urbanites. Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays a writer named Beth, who is married to a therapist named Don (Tobias Menzies). Her sister, Sarah (Micheala Watkins), who is an interior decorator with a wealthy clientele, is married to a struggling actor named Mark (Arian Moayed).
Each of these characters is well-educated, or, at least come off as such. They speak intelligently and either have professions, or passions that have become professions, that require advanced schooling and/or are otherwise far from the daily grind of the blue collar world.
By contrast, in “About My Father”, the main drivers of the plot – Salvo (Robert De Niro) and Sebastian (Sebastian Maniscalco) – have jobs. Salvo, the father referred to in the title, is a hairdresser who owns his own shop. Despite being a business owner, Salvo’s thick accent, shoot from the hip attitude and unpretentious manner mark him as blue collar all the way. His son, Sebastian, is the manager of a small hotel and he, too, is very much a chip off the old block, though he’s trying his best to hide it – particularly when he’s spending time with his caker girlfriend, Ellie (Leslie Bibb), and her very wealthy, very square and very indulgent family.
As you may have noticed, “You Hurt My Feelings” has been well-reviewed. Its’ Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer currently sits at 95%. Its Metacritic Metascore is at 82.
“About My Father”, as you might have guessed by now, has not done as well with critics. Its’ Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer is currently at 35% and its’ Metacritic Metascore is at 39.
I don’t normally quote scores from aggregate review sites. Why bother? Within those scores, whether high or low, are individual reviews that often clash with that overall score. Even the 95% RT rated “You Hurt My Feelings” contains, within all those reviews (157 in all), 8 negative assessments. Those 8 are not wrong, just as those 149 are not right. It’s all subjective.
Okay, so here’s where I get down to it. I think that, as much as can be determined by comparing apples and oranges, “About My Father” is the better film and it’s not even close.
Look, I’m the son of Italian immigrants. My folks came to Canada in the late 50s. So, as you might have guessed, there may be some bias at play here. I’m owning up to that, but I wonder if there is a different bias not being owned up to that has inflated the scores of the truly terrible, “You Hurt My Feelings.”
Both films are, at least partially, about parent and child relationships. In “You Hurt My Feelings”, Beth and Don’s kid, Eliot (Owen Teague) is pissed off at his mother and father throughout the film. Early on, he’s grossed out by them sharing an ice cream cone and their general touchy-feely nature. Later, fresh off of being dumped by his girlfriend, Eliot tees off on his mom – accusing her of setting him up for failure in his adult life by over praising him as a kid.
Likewise, in “About My Father”, Ellie’s frustrated by her super wealthy parents’ habit of intervening in her life by using their status and abundant cash to secure her ‘triumphs’ behind her back. In both cases, we have parents who are so afraid of their kids failing, and therefore feeling bad about themselves, that they warp their sense of self and, ironically, make it doubly hard for them to truly achieve in their adult lives.
Here’s the thing, though. “About My Father” does a much better job than “You Hurt My Feelings” in dramatizing this problem. Very early in the film, the writers of “About My Father” plant the seed for the eventual blow up between Ellie and her parents. An early scene sees Sebastian arriving late to a gallery showing of Ellie’s latest series of paintings. Smiling from ear to ear, Ellie tells Sebastian the good news – all of her paintings have been sold to the same buyer. The couple embraces and all is well in the world. Midway through the film, though, Sebastian, and only Sebastian, discovers that Ellie’s parents are that very same buyer. Knowing the news would break Ellie’s heart, he keeps it to himself. Naturally, towards the end of the 2nd act, Ellie discovers the truth and storms out of the house in a scene that rings true, is well executed and also emotionally resonant.
Contrast that with a similar scene in “You Hurt My Feelings.” Fresh from being dumped by his girlfriend, Eliot unloads on his mom for overpraising him throughout his childhood. To hear him tell it, by doing this, his mom has single-handedly set him up for failure in an adult world that didn’t tuck him in at night when he was a kid. While his mother’s overpraising was somewhat benign, when it came to little Eliot’s swimming abilities, now, according to big E, in an adult world, where Eliot is struggling to make it as a writer, the stakes and the consequences are greater, therefore the disappointment and hurt is greater.
The problem with how this scene plays out is that there is no set up, no gradual build up of suspense and, just plain, no logical A leads to B leads to C progression of the problem. His girlfriend dumps him. Eliot goes home and immediately wants to talk to his mom about it – does that ring true? Then, he segues from being down for being dumped into an all out attack on his mom for not telling him what a horrible swimmer he was when he was 9 years old. Not only is it hard to believe that a 23 year-old boy is eager to talk to his mom about being dumped by his girlfriend within hours of that dumping happening, but Eliot’s argument seems too rehearsed, too writerly. His examples come off as too prepared. In short, the whole scene feels forced and phony. And that’s just the beginning of “You Hurt My Feelings” problems.
Late in the film, wanting to put the earlier conflict behind them and re-establish a close, loving relationship between mother and son, writer-director Nicole Holofcener comes up with a doozy of a scene. While Beth is visiting her son, at the cannabis shop in which he works, two thugs bust through the door and hold the place up. Instantly, Beth jumps over the counter and onto her son in an attempt to protect him from any flying bullets. She’s willing to take a bullet for you, you schmuck! Apologize to her right now! How convenient of the thugs to schedule their hold up for the precise moment that Beth visits her son at his job.
There’s more!
There were scenes, particularly the ones between Beth, Sara and their mother (Jeannie Berlin) where I could sense the set. In a sit down scene, in their mother’s apartment, there’s a two shot of Beth and Sara and then a reverse shot of their mother and then back and forth. The acting didn’t quite rise to the level of convincing enough to make me forget (that suspension of disbelief that makes movies magical) that they were shot at two different times and that a bunch of people were just off camera watching them. In other words, they needed another take or two to get it right.
On top of that, I thought Tobias Menzies was weak as Beth’s therapist husband, Don. His scenes, particularly his close-ups in his office, were weak and unconvincing. Again, the acting in these scenes was so bad that the illusion was broken and I could sense the set.
In another seriously baffling scene, a couple (David Cross and Amber Tamblyn), who have been seeing Don for two years, due to marriage troubles, make one last trip to his office in order to ask for a refund. Yes, that’s right, a refund. Now, that could be the premise for a funny SNL sketch, but here, in a grounded comedy/drama it just doesn’t fit.
All of this adds up to one super sloppy sandwich of a movie that spills most of its contents on the floor long before you go to take a bite.
Even the fake book covers look as if they were done at the last minute. I’m no Sherlock, but the clues were adding up for me and it was, and continues to be clear that, “You Hurt My Feelings” was a shoot where either something went horribly wrong or they just didn’t have enough time or both.
Yet, the reviews! How could it be? Look, we’re not talking about great movie making here – not in the case of “You Hurt My Feelings” and definitely not with “About My Father.” What we are talking about, though, is an obviously inept film that got rave reviews and a slight, mildly funny, admittedly overly familiar comedy, that got absolutely trashed.
Is there a bias towards a film about sophisticated urbanites and against a movie about ordinary joes? In other words, did reviewers mistake the sophistication of the subjects in each film for the sophistication of the movies themselves?
Of course, I can’t say for certain, but I’m seriously confused by all the praise lavished on a movie, “You Hurt My Feelings”, that trips over itself all the way towards an ending that also seems like a rush job.
