Christopher Walken and Amber Heard bring a prickly charge to this low-key comedy drama about a dysfunctional father-daughter relationship
Christopher Walken and Amber Heard bring a prickly charge to this low-key comedy drama about a dysfunctional father-daughter relationship.
Walken's much-married Sinatra-style crooner is such a self-absorbed windbag that it's hardly a surprise that Heard's post-punk wannabe, his eldest daughter, is so mixed up.
A self-loathing slacker, she sings jingles for a living, sleeps with inappropriate men and sabotages her career at every opportunity.
They reunite at his luxury house in the Hamptons, where she resumes her bristling sibling rivalry with her successful straight-arrow sister (Kelli Garner), while he spends his time spinning anecdotes, editing his Wikipedia page and planning a comeback.
With its maddening, hard-to-like leading characters, writer-director Robert Edwards' movie probably won't grab you right away, but its well-observed characters will slowly work their way under your skin if you give them a chance.
It's also worth hanging around for the droll montage of album covers that plays over the closing credits and chronicles Walken's character's hit-and-miss efforts to surf a series of musical waves throughout his career from swing to psychedelic, reggae to rap.
