Like Father movie review: Kristen Bell, Kelsey Grammer can't save this awkward father-daughter film

Movies about estranged father-daughter relationships are not new. In 1989, Mahesh Bhatt made Daddy – a lovely film about a doomed alcoholic singer trying to reconnect with his daughter he had been forced to stay away from when she was just a child. In the 2016 German-Austrian comedy drama film Toni Erdmann, a fun-loving father makes unrelenting attempts to reconnect with his workaholic daughter, leading to hilariously disastrous consequences. So, in Lauren Miller Rogen’s recently released Netflix comedy Like Father, there is hardly anything you haven’t seen before. While it would have still made for a good watch, it is the awkwardness of the treatment – not so much of the premise – that really ruins the film. [caption id=“attachment_4962911” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Kristen Bell and Kelsey Grammer in Like Father. Image via Twitter/@bemovieseemovie[/caption] Rachel Hamilton is a young workaholic business executive for a mid-sized New York-based marketing and advertising firm. She is on the verge of securing a deal, which is set to give her a promotion. At the same time, she is supposed to get married to her boyfriend Ethan. But when work follows her all the way to the church, Ethan develops cold feet and leaves her at the altar. Meanwhile, unknown to Rachel, her father Harry Hamilton – who left home when she was a baby – is present among the guests that day, wishing to secretly bless her now grown up girl on the best day of her life. Harry witnesses the fiasco, and the father in him steps forward to take Rachel out for drinks to drown her sorrows. The two get so drunk that they end up on a cruise ship, which Rachel had booked for her honeymoon. Forced to stay in the confined location of the cruise ship, they must now sort out their differences and try to mingle, out of courtesy with a motley crew of tourists. While the film is certainly not unwatchable, it does squander its potential. Despite the fact that nothing in the story is new and innovative, the film could have still worked because both the lead actors – Kristen Bell as the ruthlessly ambitious career-driven woman and veteran actor Kelsey Grammer as her repentant father – are immensely talented, and they could have more than made up for the flaws in the writing. But what really pulls the film down are the cringeworthy moments of sexual tension created between father and daughter when they end up on the cruise – for instance, when they are forced to share a stateroom within the ship, or when everyone on board mistakes them as honeymooners. The writing is so sloppy in these parts that the helplessness of the actors is clearly visible on their embarrassed faces, and by the time they get a go-ahead from their director to suddenly spring the good sense to clarify their situation to the rest of the tourists, the film has already lost your faith. There are some rare tender moments between Rachel and Harry though, particularly one on the top of a waterfall on a hiking excursion when their ship docks. But such moments are lost in the deluge of childishly put together scenes,  for instance the karaoke sequence in the film’s climax. A subplot involving Harry’s best friend is utterly inconsequential to the plot, and could have been easily done away with. Among the tourists, there are a bunch of people who are just not funny – a gay couple, an elderly couple, a black couple, and Seth Rogen (the director’s real life husband) as a recently divorced man who Rachel tries to bond with, just to get away from her father. Rogen’s cameo is perhaps the most uninspiring one I have seen in this decade, and like him, none of the actors are able to produce one genuine chuckle. So much for comedy! Kristen Bell does her bit, though, and her sincere efforts come through in her performance. One can see how fiercely ambitious she is, trying to stay ahead and make it big in the corporate race, armed with her cell-phone inside which she lives, breathes and sleeps. A cruise with no network reception is like a choking nightmare for her. And she successfully manages to bring forth her frustration, despise and angst at her own situation, her estranged father and a man who has left her at the altar – all together on her face, emoting through her eyes all the time. But it is Kelsey Grammer who comes up with the best performance among the film’s cast. Watch how beautifully he tries to hide his grief and guilt behind a façade of humour as he tries, over and over again, to reach out to his little girl, never once trying to force his way into her life. He never demands her forgiveness, and makes an effort to win it instead. And although that’s heartwarming to see, once again, it is nothing new. Watch Like Father if you have nothing else to do, or if you want to witness how much fun life aboard a cruise ship can be.