Film-Forward

James Morosini, left, and Patton Oswalt in I Love My Dad (I Love My Dad, LLC/Hantz Motion Pictures/SXSW)

Writer/director James Morosini (and actor too, recently in The Sex Lives of College Girls) has come up with one of the most tightly structured and proudly pervy American indies of recent years. At a clipped pace, his screenplay gleefully builds complication after complication to the point that it’s almost impossible to resolve.

The blend of raunchiness and tenderness expands significantly upon the film’s gimmicky hook: an undependable, sad sack of a father creates a fraudulent online profile in order to follow his exasperated son, who has blocked dad from his life entirely. The twenty-something Franklin (played by Morosini) has just arrived back to his mother’s home after a stint in therapy following a suicide attempt, and he hopes this clean break will be therapeutic. Apparently, the plot is based on something that really happened to Morosini, according to the opening credits, which also claim that “My dad asked me to tell you it didn’t.”

Chuck (Patton Oswalt, at his most hangdog) uploads photos (including bikini shots) from an actual online profile, that of Becca Thompson (influence-turned-actress Claudia Sulewski), a young waitress with a beaming smile who works at his local diner in Augusta, Maine. From their first contact, a perplexed Franklin asks Becca why he’s her first and only connection listed on her profile. She—that is, Chuck—says she is starting a new account after taking a social media break.

Over the course of several days, the breezy back and forth banter leads to him asking for her phone number. At this juncture, Chuck enlists his randy and uninhibited boss, Erica (the ever-dependable Rachel Dratch), to impersonate Becca. Rachel finds Chuck’s scheme mean and stupid, but when he agrees to have sex with her in the office, she’s on board, and in her phone chats with Franklin, sex rapidly rises to the occasion. (Erica has clearly avoided all sexual harassment prevention training.)

Morosini imaginatively stages the online interactions, in which virtual chats become real, at least in Franklin’s mind, and the entire cast is game. One moment, he imagines Becca sitting on a rooftop with him; the next, they are jogging together, while their dialogue underscores how banal online conversations often are. When Franklin fantasizes he’s French kissing Becca, on screen he’s actually making out with the culprit behind the virtual façade—dad—and taking the film’s title too literally.

The scenario doubles as confirmation bias in action: Franklin ignores warning signs and willingly believes he has found his soul mate. Chuck often answers Franklin’s texts to Becca while standing next to his son. And without Franklin realizing it, Becca’s texts begin sounding a lot like advice from a father. The only one who is completely put-upon and without much say in the entire affair is Chuck’s ex-wife and Franklin’s mother, Diane (Amy Landecker), the family’s nagging naysayer.

As much it succeeds as a discomfiting and cringey comedy, I Love My Dad also works in part as a drama of an estranged family. But even in the darker moments between father and son, the scale never slips too long toward the darker side, without downplaying Chuck’s eyebrow-raising, self-absorbed actions. Thanks to him, this may be the best unofficial sequel to the 2010 documentary Catfish.