PLOT: When his parents mysteriously separate after years of marriage, a man gets a second chance to get to know his father.

Actor Paul Reiser wrote The Thing About My Folks and no doubt has a lot of interesting, funny and touching things to say about his mom and dad.

He just didn't say them here.

The Thing About My Folks is a straight-up case of really bad filmmaking, all mangled punchlines and sitcom setups and all of it too long in the telling.

The movie starts with a rambling narrative about dad and his use of baby powder and works up to a punchline that includes a comparison between the smell of "A healthy baby and my father's balls."

The wince factor never flags.

The material is endlessly borscht-belt-gone-wrong.

Paul Reiser and Elizabeth Perkins star as Ben and Rachel Kleinman, a married couple with kids in New York. They are stunned when Ben's dad Sam (Peter Falk) turns up at their place one night, unannounced and alone.

Mom, it seems, has left Sam, pinning a note to the fridge to announce her intentions. After 40 years? What's going on?

Ben suspects his mother has been fed up for a long time. Sam says that's nonsense. For reasons too trite to get into, Ben and Sam end up on a road trip together. It's like a second chance for them to experience various father-son outings -- they buy an old car together, they go fishing, they see a ballgame, they play pool at a local pub. As they are mostly driving around rural upstate New York, the scenery is pretty.

They drive. They talk about family and relationships. Sam gets to have not one, not two, but three! old man farting jokes. The father and son talk about women. They talk about mom's unhappiness. Sam shows how tough and smart he is! Sam has a cigarette!

Sam is really good at the pool table! Sam can dance!

Is there no end to the surprises Ben will have when it comes to his father? Oy.

When mom finally does show up in the story, she proves to be a shaggy dog played by Olympia Dukakis. The Thing About My Folks could just as easily have been titled I Really Don't Much Like Women and the story would have remained the same.

The Thing About My Folks lays on the schmaltz with a heavy hand, yet leaves you not liking any of the main players. That's quite a feat of filmmaking.

BOTTOM LINE: For a comedic drama about fathers and sons and family, this film is neither humorous nor emotionally engaging. About an hour into it, we found ourselves hoping all the characters would die soon. That seemed to indicate that the movie might not be a good bet.

(This film is rated PG)
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