I saw this last week, and while I didn't leave at intermission, I'm not sure why I didn't. I didn't get much out of it, and there were times when I was just sitting there thinking, "I think I hate this." The Everybody Loves Raymond comparison above is apt, especially since one big moment (which many have alluded to) did happen on that show, and was highly memorable. Even before that, the whole setup--the old parents who hate each other (the wife who wants more affection, the husband who grudgingly shows he has feelings for her beneath the mean, crusty exterior), the daughter-in-law playing counselor, her clueless husband, the whiny other son--did seem overly familiar. Beyond that it was like a really bad sitcom where there's one funny line every five minutes, and in between just long stretches of uninteresting, undeveloped a**holes being shrill and/or boring. (I didn't love Everybody Loves Raymond, but it was better written than this.) The cast was fine and gave the characters what dimensions they could, but the people they were playing were dull and insufferable. Maybe not truly terrible (it did have those laughs every five minutes, and hit one effective emotional beat that has stuck with me) so much as exceedingly mediocre, which was its own kind of pain.
Updated On: 1/7/20 at 01:34 PM
