This modest film about family values as practiced by a refugee from LA's movie industry has it moments, but lacks the detail and insight that might have made it more than the sum of its parts. Widower Max Fish (Jeff Goldblum) once made movies, but now owns and manages a bookshop in the
New Jersey shore town where he lives with his teenage son, Ed (Rory Cochrane). The father-son relationship is troubled and rather cool. Ed and his high school pal, Smiley (Mitchell Marchand), seem to accept the drug dealing of Smiley's brother Flo (Rocky Carroll) as easily as a grisly series of
local murders. Complicating life further for Ed and Smiley is the emergence of a new psychedelic drug called "chew." The real catalysts in the film's narrative, however, are two women, Kyle (Famke Janssen) and Lisa (Natasha Gregson Wagner). Max meets Kyle wholesomely enough at a footrace in which
they are contestants, while Ed discovers Lisa at a "chew" session. While Max's relationship with Kyle seems to prosper (she attends the opening night presentation of a modernized Don Quixote in which he naturally stars), Ed discovers that Lisa is too promiscuous for his taste. Ed forsakes the
premiere of the local play and instead bites into some "chew" to commune with the dolphins and his dead mother, but meets the dreaded shore killer instead.
Filmed locally in the towns that dot the New Jersey shoreline, FATHERS AND SONS has an authentic ring, but it's too laid-back for its own good. Several able performers and an engaging lack of pretension can't compensate for thematic incoherence. leave a comment