We’re told writer-director-star James Morosini’s cringe-inducing and off-putting non-comedy “I Love My Dad” is based on Morosini’s personal experiences with his father, and one can only hope Morosini’s real-life pops didn’t stoop to the sociopathic levels of cruelty and manipulation exhibited by the fictional version. Occasionally creative but mostly distasteful and thuddingly unfunny, this is the kind of story that asks us to take wild leaps of faith at every turn—and then buy into a redemption story arc that is neither plausible nor earned.
As we learn from an opening montage of phone messages, Patton Oswalt’s Chuck has been an absentee father for nearly all of the important events in the life of his son Franklin (Morosini). Cut to present day, and Franklin is just out of a rehabilitation facility after a suicide attempt, and he wants nothing to do with his estranged father, so he blocks him on social media.
