Is there anything scarier than spending a weekend with you and your boyfriend’s parents, alone, in the middle of nowhere, for the very first time? In the comedy “The Parenting” the answer is definitely “yes,” which is unfortunate because it’s also a horror movie and that means all the allegedly “scary” parts fall flat. On the other hand, the comedy never gets off the ground either. So I guess this whole movie qualifies as a low point.
“The Parenting” stars Nik Dodani (“Twisters”) and Brandon Flynn (“Hellraiser”) as Rohan and Josh, two young boyfriends who are ready to take their relationship to the next level. Rohan, the fastidious worrywart of the two, has rented a beautiful house in the country for a romantic weekend getaway. With their parents. I can already see a flaw in Rohan’s plan.
Rohan’s adopted parents Frank (Brian Cox) and Sharon (Edie Falco) are a bit stuck up. He doesn’t know how to express his feelings and she’s exceptionally hard to please. Josh’s parents Cliff (Dean Norris) and Liddy (Lisa Kudrow) are suburban dorks who love their son but often say the wrong thing in social situations. How droll.
You see, Rohan wants to propose to Josh this weekend, and Josh accidentally found out in advance, so the pressure is on both of them to make everything perfect. But their parents, get this… their parents make it awkward. How awkward, you ask? Somewhat awkward, occasionally spiking into “pretty awkward” territory. Several people see each other’s genitals when they would really rather have not. How droll.
Making matters worse, or at least making the movie longer, is the fact that this mansion is haunted by an evil demon, whose summoning spell is the Wi-Fi password, a scheme even the obviously evil proprietor Brenda (Parker Posey, really giving 110% here) didn’t think would work. But soon Frank is possessed by a demon, ghosts are scaring people left and right, and at some point a man has to stick his finger up a demonically possessed dog’s butt. How droll.
“The Parenting” is a boring film but if you can wrap your head around this, it’s a fascinatingly boring film. That doesn’t make it any less boring, it’s just a bit of a riddle: a film with a flawless ensemble cast (the always-delightful Vivian Bang even shows up for no real reason, except to translate a little Latin), from director Craig Johnson, whose splendiferous “The Skeleton Twins” is one of the best and funniest films about family strife from the 2010s — and it’s dull? On paper this should have had “slam dunk” written all over it, which might have added a few unnecessary basketball scenes but otherwise it would have been a welcome improvement.
So instead we watch “The Parenting” in blasé curiosity, as we engage in the purely intellectual exercise of sussing out what’s gone wrong. Scaring the audience is clearly a lesser concern; Johnson tosses out a handful of boo scares but doesn’t seem to want his audience terrified or even keyed up. This film’s energy couldn’t power an electric toothbrush. But that’s OK, maybe the horror is just here to goose up a classical and light comedy of errors about romantic misunderstandings and embarrassing everybody at social events. That doesn’t seem to work either, since the comedy of errors is lethargic and generic. The horror doesn’t inform the A-plot very much, or vice-versa.
The only thing about “The Parenting” that completely connects is Brian Cox, who may be hamstrung by an inert production but who clearly thinks there’s something poignant about a quiet, unassuming man suddenly consumed with evil. Watching the calm and kind Frank lash out at his son’s boyfriend with a knife, then yelling profane homophobic slurs, isn’t funny. And it’s a disturbing, very serious attempt at scary, no matter how comic the timing is supposed to be. The attacks raise questions about whether Frank has secretly been carrying hate in his heart. Cox has a few scenes to illustrate that turmoil but the rest of the characters are too busy worrying about their own relationships or cleaning up projectile vomit to properly deal with the plausible, awful fear that your parents don’t mean it when they say they love and accept you.
That’s the only part of “The Parenting” that feels like it comes from a genuine place. The rest feels almost as arch as a parody film, artificial and superficial, but nowhere near silly or clever enough to get away with it. We spend all our time with these characters, some of them lovely, some of them annoying, all of them well-intentioned, and we never get to know them. We just watch this wonderful cast try to spin straw into gold, and getting… no, not fool’s gold. Fool’s gold is a funny metal. What’s an unfunny-sounding metal? Hang on, I’ll look one up. “Bismuth.”
Yeah, that’s the ticket. “The Parenting” is comedy bismuth at best.
“The Parenting” premieres March 13 on Max.
