Stream It Or Skip It: ‘About My Father’ on VOD, a Robert De Niro / Sebastian Maniscalco Comedy Very Much Influenced By ‘Meet The Parents’

About My Father (now streaming on VOD services like Amazon Prime Video) got me thinking: When did Robert De Niro’s career transgress from guy-who-made-Raging Bull to guy-who-stars-in-infantile-comedies? I think it began back in 1999 with Analyze This, which opened the door to a trio of Meet the Parents movies, which made me want to Bickle myself (interpret that as you may). Meet the Parents is an obvious reference point for About My Father, which technically isn’t “a Robert De Niro movie” – it’s a passion project of sorts for stand-up comedian Sebastian Maniscalco, who used his standup shtick about growing up in an Italian-American family as a springboard for a big, broad mainstream comedy. As these things go, cultures will clash, testicles will be traumatized and De Niro will mug. But will we care? That’s a big ask. A huge one, to be honest.

ABOUT MY FATHER: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Sebastian Maniscalco plays Sebastian Maniscalco, who narrates his humble beginnings as a son of Sicilian immigrants. His father Salvo (De Niro) left Italy for Chicago, where he’s run a salon for decades. Salvo is quite the character – he’s an artist working in the medium of women’s hair, he’s a cheapskate, he taught his son the importance of drenching oneself in cologne and working your ass off from dawn ’til dusk, etc. All those quirks and stereotypes of an Italian-American family, and Sebastian ends up falling for “the complete opposite”: Ellie (Leslie Bibb), who we meet in closeup as she takes a big bite of a hot dog. She’s peppy, sweet, funny and an artist whose every painting is a somewhat-abstract depiction of vulva. We see her teaching Sebastian how to smile without looking like a clown frozen in a death-rictus. And it only makes sense that he wants to marry her.

Easier said than done, of course, because it requires getting his hands on his grandmother’s heirloom wedding ring – and he has to go through Salvo first. Not that the old man dislikes lovely Ellie. He just has trepidations about her upbringing, and has never met her family, and understandably isn’t sure if he’s ready to share his son with anyone else; Sebastian’s the only family he has left. Sebastian wants to propose during a long Fourth of July weekend visit with Ellie’s family, who are the kind of people who have a summer home. On the grounds of a country club. With free-range peacocks. And (shudder) golf. Theoretically amusingly, Sebastian rrrrrreeeeeeeaches to compare the two families’ immigrant status; it’s just that Ellie’s family came here on the Mayflower, and did all the horrible stuff that OG colonizers did, and now they’re drowning in generational wealth. But hey, at least they’ve got something in common.

There’s a wishy-washy joke here about Ellie’s mother Tigger (Kim Cattrall) being a senator who’s vehemently anti-immigration. Her father Bill (David Rasche) owns a luxury hotel chain, but at least he started with only one hotel, gifted to him by his father. Her brothers (Anders Holm and Brett Dier) are a grinning shitheel fratboy and a dopey-ass neo-new-age dingdong, respectively. Ellie fears that she’s dragging Sebastian into “an Italian version of Get Out.” But he’s confident he can “charm the pleated pants off these people.” And this is when it’s determined that Salvo needs to join them, guaranteeing a wacky culture-clash weekend where Sebastian tries to tame his father’s grimfaced gesticulations as they tool around on yachts and chow down at wildly elaborate clambakes. Will Sebastian and Ellie’s relationship endure all this idiocy? NO SPOILERS!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: About My Father is very much on par with the Meet the Parentses, partly because it pretty much repeats a bunch of the same dumb tropes. Be thankful it doesn’t dip as low as De Niro’s “Grandpa” dreck, the sub-gutter-level Dirty Grandpa and family-friendly excursion-into-stupidity The War with Grandpa.

Performance Worth Watching: Leslie Bibb isn’t given any opportunities to steal scenes here, but she at least plays the most likable of all the stereotypes passing as characters here.

Memorable Dialogue: Sebastian’s voiceover, comparing Ellie’s ritzy family with his own: “The only Italians with Roman numerals after their names are Popes and Rocky Balboa.”

Sex and Skin: Bare male buns exposed during a HIGHLY COMICAL mishap.

Our Take: This all could be much worse than it is. Not that it’s great, or good, and it only occasionally grazes on the clover of mediocrity. But Maniscalco maintains enough heart at the core of this overly familiar quasi-comedic dithering-about to make us give half a donkey’s dook about his relationship with his father. Crucially, his pairing with Bibb is sweet enough to earn our rooting interest, and it’s strong enough to withstand the moronic shenanigans that occur with the inevitability of death, taxes and men getting whanged in the wang in dingbat comedies like this.

Now, to say About My Father won me over would border on Schwarzeneggerian overstatement. The filmmaking is rough around the edges, the comedy is puerile and the characters make cardboard look like a slab of fresh sperm whale blubber. But so many movies in this vein are rooted in cynicism, and Maniscalco avoids being mean-spirited, leaning more towards satire, specifically aiming at the big fat easy target of white wealth and privilege. He keeps things rooted in his brand of comedy, which affectionately pokes fun at his cultural heritage, and it yields a few humble yuks. This isn’t to say the movie isn’t pointless; it’s just amiably pointless, and even though that splits the hair pretty thin, it makes a difference.

Our Call: Sub-basement-level expectations yield a surprisingly tolerable experience. About My Father is 51 percent just fine, 49 percent irritating. STREAM IT, but only if you’re already in tune with Maniscalco’s comedy. 

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.