Honestly, I didn’t want to see About My Father. The trailers were painfully unfunny and poor Robert de Niro has a habit of wasting his time in bad comedies. And I am not familiar with the comedic work of Sebastian Maniscalco, but I imagine it would not be for me. A friend of mine did want to see it, however, and she doesn’t often pick the movie, so today I took one for the team. And while About My Father is not as dreadful as the trailers would suggest, I don’t think Sebastian Maniscalo is an engaging screen presence in the slightest. I didn’t find his brand of humor charming or particularly funny.

Sebastian (Maniscalco) is dating Ellie (Leslie Bibb), an artist who only does paintings that look like female genitalia and nothing else. And yet, she seems to be quite successful. She comes from a wealthy family, her father (David Rasche) owns a chain of hotels and her mother (Kim Cattrall) is a conservative politician. Sebastian’s father Salvo (de Niro) is lonely after his wife has passed away, but he still owns and runs the hair salon he’s operated since the 1970s. He’s a man of modest means, and he’s a total Italian stereotype. Ellie’s parents want to meet Sebastian over the fourth of July weekend, and this is all derailed when Salvo insists on coming along. Wackiness ensues.

Remember that time in the mid 2010s when people on the internet (straight white men with nothing better to do) were tearing Amy Schumer apart for allegedly being a joke thief? I counted at least six jokes in the first 30 minutes of this film that were lifted from sitcoms I’d seen in the past. The joke about art that looks like female genitalia and “doesn’t that look like it could be a sunset?” is directly lifted from an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, and there’s something later on that feels very much ripped off from an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. These are old gags, but I noticed the similarities. But then I got tired of counting the stolen jokes. I assume there were more.

Sebastian Maniscalco is a nothing performer and he isn’t very funny. He acts as the straight man to de Niro’s craziness, and that doesn’t serve the comedian in the film particularly well. He is not a good foil to de Niro, nor do the two have very much comedic chemistry, despite this film allegedly having been based on his own relationship with his father. Not much to say about Robert De Niro here either. He can do this kind of material in his sleep, and unfortunately for every The Irishman of his late stage career he gets about five of these.

It also made me question Kim Cattrall’s mental state, for saying yes to this kind of trash when she could be making bank pretending to be Sarah Jessica Parker’s friend. She does provide one of the movie’s only genuinely funny scenes, so there’s that. Anders Holm and Brett Dier, as Ellie’s two spoiled brat brothers provide some of the only genuine laughs here, but they also don’t get enough beyond the film’s inherent mediocrity. This could be a sharp satire about the wealthy, powerful and vapid, but the film regrettably doesn’t get all the way there.

Overall, About My Father is more sweet than expected and totally harmless, I just didn’t find much of it very funny and any charm this film could claim to have was totally lost on me. My friend enjoyed it, and my screening was comprised of the over-70 crowd that saw movies like Going in Style and 80 for Brady in droves. And while there’s nothing wrong with these films (as long as they’re not Queen Bees/Poms/Just Getting Started bad), and they’re all very light and a decent way to pass time, I do think their intended audiences deserve better.

And also, not for nothing, there’s a superior version of this Italian-American family dramedy that you can now rent at home – Ray Romano’s directorial debutSomewhere in Queens. Also not a perfect movie, but you’re more likely to feel some kind of genuine emotion than you are with About My Father. There could be some very interesting explorations into the themes if this were a study about toxic masculinity or even a film really about the relationships between fathers and sons, and the dynamics of that relationship. But we never really get there. In the end, a harmless movie to watch with family but It’s all surface level stuff and it will leave you without many big laughs and without anything to discuss afterwards.