Parenthood (1989)

I have a distant memory of enjoying Parenthood when it first came out, more than 20 years ago. Today, however, it seems a dated and conventional film, albeit one with a great cast. Steve Martin is the film's linchpin, and without his ridiculous goofing and dark sarcastic asides it would be too sentimental to bear. In the midst of little league baseball game, when his neurotic son manages to catch a fly ball, Martin saves the film from its own melodramatic earnestness by doing a Snoopy dance across the baseball pich. Another typical scene has Martin's live-in grandmother passing through an argumentative family moment, on her way out of the house to wait for the rest of the family in the car, but she takes a moment to recite a heart warming analogy, likening parenthood to a roller coaster. Martin then cuts through the life affirming tone with an unkind but perfectly delivered jibe at her expense ("If she's so smart, why is she sitting in our neighbour's car?", he asks). Martin's turn as "Cowboy Bob", spontaneously filling in for a birthday party performer who fails to show up, is also one of the film's winning scenes.

Mary Steenburgen, Dianne Weist, Jason Robards, Rick Moranis, Tom Hulce, Keannu Reeves and a very young Joaquin Pheonix also do their best to make the audience care about what happens in this extended family of over-achievers, drop-outs, misfits, carefree souls and worry warts. There are divorces, teenage marriages, children born out of wedlock, and unwelcome pregnancies that come late in life. Yet for a film that purports to be about family, or at least the parental perspective on family, it is odd that it gives the greatest weight to the male point of view. Women (even the great Dianne Weist) are inconsistent and unruly, and prone to bearing children when men least expect it, while Martin and Robards, playing the film's most responsible and serious fathers, are there to save the day every time. This is a film that really should be called "Fatherhood", and it is no suprise to find that there are no women among the screenwriters, producers and director. The male perspective, together with its upper-middle class, white-picket-fence setting, render the film as a reassuring fantasy for suburban audiences. It is certainly unimaginable that any of the characters in a film like this could be gay, and the scene in which the wayward son (Hulce) returns home with a black child, leaving his family speechless with surprise and discomfort, is excruciating.  Moments like that serve as a reminder how much has changed in the last 20 years, and make Parenthood seem embarassingly dated. We can only imagine what a re-make might include, and who might make it, but hopefully it would not be as narrow and predictable as this, or as eager to fall back on sentimentality.