THE PARENTING
US, 2025, 94 minutes, Colour.
Nik Dodani, Brandon Flynn, Brian Cox, Edie Falco, Lisa Kudrow, Dean Norris, Vivian Bang, Parker Posey.
Directed by Craig Johnson.
It might seem strange to begin a review of filma that looks to be focusing on family, The Parenting, with an alert to potential audiences.
Those who take cinema very seriously may be attracted by the significant names of cast members, Brian Cox, Edie Falco, Lisa Kudrow, Parker Posey. But, if they began to watch, they would soon be wondering what they were watching – and why the strong cast actually said yes to be in the film.
Audiences who enjoy offbeat and broad comedies with touches of horror as well as innuendo, will be entertained with no intellectual demands made on them! In fact, the writer of the film, Ken Sublette, has written almost 300 episodes of sketches for Saturday Night Live, as well as several special episodes.
While there is a linear plot, the main effect of this film is, as with comics sketches, short episodes, some working, some working less well, but one after the other to make the effect.
There is a mysterious parenting prologue to the film, 1983, a family with difficulties, some mysterious supernatural goings-on and the family trapped and their house becoming a haunted house.
40 years on, an estate agent, played by Parker Posey in a tantalising style, rents the house. The first occupants are a young gay couple with intentions of proposing. They invite their parents to join them. And, there later joined by a great friend.
On the one hand, this is a comedy which takes gay characters and relationships seriously (even with quite a number of jokes on them), focuses on the response of the parent generation, but quite a lot of tangles. The couple is played by Nik Dodani and Brandon Flynn. But the interesting casting is that of the parents, the very serious-minded Brian Cox and Edie Falco, the happy-go-lucky parents, Lisa Kudrow and Dean Norris. In fact, the two sets of parents rather dominate rather than the couple.
Then the haunting starts, revelations about Parker Posey and books for raising the dead, the key to raising a ghost being the Wi-Fi password! And, the various parents are asked to caricature stereotypes – and even more demands, testing dignity, a of Brire made of Brian Cox.
Plenty of farce, supernatural and ghost raising themes (and the ghost is certainly not a parent), many audiences enjoying the rollicking tone and others may be questioning why they are watching what might be called politely, “absurd”.
