‘When Did You Last See Your Father?’ a Family Affair Between Colin Firth, Jim Broadbent

Rating: 3.0/5.0

CHICAGO – With Father’s Day upon us, what better time to take in a film about a dysfunctional relationship between a father and a son?

The tongue-tying title “When Did You Last See Your Father?” is a true story exploring the secrets and lies over a lifetime of dealing with dad and a son’s bitterness when confronting everything during the time of a patriarch’s death.

Jim Broadbent in “When Did You Last See Your Father?”. Photo credit goes to Giles Keyte, copyright goes to Father Features Limited and image is courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

When we meet Arthur – portrayed by Jim Broadbent (he’s memorable in 2001’s “Moulin Rouge!”) – he’s driving his small British family to a horseracing event in the 1950s. As an illustration of his character, he’s shown cutting in front of a long line of cars by using his status as a physician.

In a voice-over, his now-older son, Blake (Colin Firth), speaks of his father’s need to always seek an advantage by any means necessary. Fast forward to 1991.

Arthur is now mortally sick with cancer and Blake attends to the sickbed while thinking about his life with his father. That focuses on flashbacks during his adolescent years and the main story coincides with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Through Blake’s memories, there’s a series of incidents that define his father’s need for coming out on top in every instance even to the sacrifice of his mousy wife and weaker children. In his attempt to find closure, Blake uses these memories to seek answers to his father’s behaviors and find peace in his own soul regarding the relationship.

Colin Firth as Blake Morrison (left) and Gina McKee as Kathy Morrison in “When Did You Last See Your Father?”. Photo credit goes to Giles Keyte, copyright goes to Father Features Limited and image is courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

The acting is superior in a rather spotty story. Broadbent is a consummate actor who finds the pinpricks in a dry script and sharpens them to magnify Arthur’s negative characteristics.

Colin Firth – who’s called upon to play his typical sensitive-man persona – surprises with subtle quirks that make his deathbed meanderings a bit atypical. But the film at times felt like an embarrassing home movie that had been run through the projector too many times.

The portrayal of a father as a creepy rat seemed to have no opposing redeeming qualities (or at least not any that would require such intense introspection of his life). It just seemed sad for the survivors.

There was a bit of spice in the flashback scenes especially with Blake’s emerging hormonal adolescence.

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His mistrust of relationships through the exposition of his father’s disparate example manifests into strange shyness around girls and a passive-aggressive affair with the family’s housekeeper. This is revisited awkwardly during the time of the father’s illness and death.

This is coupled with the teenage end-of-the-world nervousness of the missile crisis, which the father interestingly ignores. The whole family should have had some serious therapy together to prevent a lifelong couch trip for each separate member.

But that’s not how life flowed in a different era when men were men and screwed up their families accordingly. Still, on the deathbed and in the end – as the film informs – there is no place like dad.

By PATRICK McDONALD Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com