Film Pick of the Week; Like Father - review by Yvette Huddleston

Kirsten Bell plays workaholic New York marketing manager Rachel who, even on her own wedding day, is constantly on her mobile phone making ‘important’ work calls. Her wedding to physical trainer Owen is taking place in an outdoor venue in Central Park and she is so caught up in a work-related call, that she is late for her entrance to walk up the aisle. When she arrives by the side of her intended and her phone falls out of her bouquet, he considers it to be the last straw and he ditches her, very publicly, at the altar.

Rachel is made of stern stuff and despite her boss’s suggestion that she take a break, she is back in the office the following day. Things don’t go too smoothly – she has a major, table-clearing meltdown in front of her colleagues and heads home to brood. Then her estranged father Harry (Kelsey Grammer) turns up – he had snuck into the wedding the previous day – and offers to take her for a drink at her local bar. The pair have not seen each other for well over twenty years and Rachel is still smarting from the childhood abandonment so is reluctant to play nice. However, having consumed a vast amount of alcohol together they drunkenly agreeing the following morning to go on the pre-paid luxury ocean cruise that was to have been Rachel and Owen’s honeymoon. When they wake up on board sober, it doesn’t seem like quite such a good idea.

The rest of the plot plays out pretty much how you might expect it to. It’s no spoiler to say there is a reconciliation and that lessons are learnt but there is a lot of fun to be had along the way. Grammer and Bell have an easy and entirely believable father-daughter chemistry and both are gifted comic performers. Writer-director Lauren Miller Rogen also elicits nice performances from a supporting cast of (admittedly fairly stereotypical) cruising companions – the gay couple, the elderly couple, the second-time-around couple – and also includes a lovely cameo from her husband Seth as a likeable recently divorced Canadian teacher who provides (very brief) romantic interest for Bell. Make yourself comfortable on the sofa, crack out the popcorn and enjoy.