Like father, like son, like, could these two just get it over with and hug already?

Based on the poet Blake Morrison’s memoir of (nearly) the same name, When Did You Last See Your Father? should at least get a few extra points for never once in its duration leading us to believe it to be anything other than exactly what it is: a middlebrow tearjerker positively hell bent on getting two grown men to hug. Two Englishmen, no less. But what the hell. Hugging men aren’t so bad, you know, and most fathers that I’ve ever known really are this difficult to connect with, and, perhaps most importantly, with actors as strong as these it’s actually kind of a pleasure to be so shamelessly manipulated.

Alternating between a present-tense narrative that finds the 40ish Blake grappling with his father Arthur’s rapidly approaching death and flashbacks that show the child Blake struggling with Arthur’s always chipper verbal abuse (his nickname for his son is “fat head”), general neglect, barely concealed philandering, unnerving cheapness and baldly ingratiating ways, David Nicholls’ script works toward its catharsis through the steady building of Blake’s conflicting urges toward keeping a well-earned grudge and reconciling with an old man that everyone else seems to have been able to forgive. I haven’t read Morrison’s book, but it seems like Nicholls made some pretty sound selections of episodes to flesh out here, like the disastrous father-son camping trip that functions as a string of small betrayals while providing for a great deal of humour and character development. We learn enough about each of these guys over the course of the film to appreciate both of their perspectives regardless of how much we can sympathize with them.

Colin Firth and Jim Broadbent are in reality only 11-years apart, but Firth’s seething anger and general vitality set against Broadbent’s jowly expressiveness and decidedly old-fashioned charms go a long way toward forming a convincing generation gap. In fact they make a wonderful pair, one over-sensitive, the other gleefully oblivious, the both of them strikingly capable of casual cruelties. Broadbent kind of steals the show, making all the jokes and recklessly driving the scenes toward their necessary confrontations, but I found myself admiring Firth all the more for holding his own in spite of this. When Did You Last See Your Father? could have been deadly were some simpering, overbearingly earnest actor cast as Blake, but Firth makes no great show of his character’s resentment or self-assignation as the story’s token victim. His natural warmth makes for a lovely balance with Blake’s maturation into a sexual bully with a short fuse, a son who, however determined to do otherwise, is in danger of repeating his father’s worst mistakes, only without the fun.

If only director Anand Tucker (Hilary & Jackie) had the same light touch. His direction is fussy, suffocatingly tasteful, overly cutty and burdened with some creaky visual metaphors, especially his use of mirrors to impart the deeper similarities between father and son. I have to give Tucker credit however for not lingering over Arthur’s deathbed to soak up every last drop of pathos, something plenty of other directors would have leapt at the chance to do. The real guilty party with regards to bathetic overkill would have to be composer Barrington Pheloung, a Tucker regular, whose godawful score rushes ahead of the imagery, the actors, and us, to telegraph every last emotional cue in the film. The result is, of course, the reverse of what is presumably intended: we can’t actually feel as much because the music is too busy telling us what to feel instead of letting us find it. You might want to just sit back and pretend the music’s coming from the sound system of some annoying neighbour, and enjoy watching Firth, Broadbent, et al make the discoveries on their own.