There are some interesting ideas at the bottom of a movie called Dad On The Run, but you have to dig deep to find them.
This is a French farce involving a new father, his son's foreskin, and the ritual/religious need to bury that bit o' baby after three days. Like an I Love Lucy episode -- not that we recall any circumcision episodes -- everything that can go wrong does go wrong, and in such a sitcom fashion that the movie becomes wildly annoying. That's a shame, because Dad On The Run has some wonderful scenes.
The beginning of the movie is quick, funny and promising. Jonas (Clement Sibony) and Julie (Marie Desgranges) have their first child, and -- despite advance tests that suggested they were expecting a daughter -- it is a boy.
Jonas is Jewish but not very religious, and takes all the advice he gets at the baby's bris (circumcision). A friend suggests that the correct procedure is to bury the baby's foreskin after three days, so that's what Jonas decides to do.
Dad On The Run is set against the real circumstances of the Pope's youth rally in Paris in 1997, so what we have here is a thought-provoking look at religious belief and ritual -- that gets buried under bad comedy.
In the process of trying to properly bury his son's foreskin, our hero suffers the usual second thoughts, flat tires, bizarre losses, encounters with wild women and thugs, confusing party scenes, red herrings and real herrings and so on and so forth. The effort of watching and wondering how he'll be further put off his mission becomes tiresome. And not funny.
On the plus side, Dad On The Run has a keeper performance from Clement Sibony as Jonas, and a frankly inspired bit from Rona Hartner, who plays Nina, a Romanian Catholic obsessed with the Pope. All the performances in the film are very good.
Dad On The Run offers some humorous insight into how life changes after children start showing up and includes some witty sequences on the interference of others into that situation. In an important way, the movie is about faith, though that message gets lost in the comic wrapping. The film is a failure, but a brave one.
Dad On The Run is in French, with English subtitles.
(This film is rated PG)
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