Fathers' Day

Crystal’s deadpan expressions and one liners interlock perfectly with Williams’s multiple personalities and verbal asides. They’re like basketball all-stars flipping no-look passes, trading slam-dunks and practically chest-bumping each other. Director Ivan Reitman doesn’t have to do more than keep time.

Hollywood's big-screen answer to France's 1983 charming film Les Comperes is a wacky star vehicle wildly out of control. [9 May 1997, p.D1]

The movie is unambitious and sweet and nothing more. Precisely what we expect from producer-director Ivan Reitman these days, after good-natured audacity got his career started with hits like Animal House and Stripes. [9 May 1997, p.5]

The mechanical possibilities are worked out with precision and relish, but [the director] is careful not to allow the comedy to linger too long in the realm of real feelings. A platitudinous ending restores a safe and sane emotional order.”

There's an air of desperation about this movie - a sense that the stars are yearning to do something so patently undemanding that it just can't miss.

Robin Williams and Billy Crystal can each provoke a lot more laughs in a minute of standup than they jointly manage during the entire running time of Fathers' Day.

Add to these problems the fact that Fathers' Day is a comedy starring two reputedly hilarious people who don't make you laugh once, and you have a movie that would be great if everything about it weren't terrible.