A single man who has no great attachments in life is, by some complicated chain of circumstances, entrusted with the care of someone else’s child. Adventures ensue, and along the way both child and unlikely guardian do their own share of growing up. As an essential story premise, it’s been a Hollywood go-to for over a century, at least since Charlie Chaplin awkwardly took on a foundling infant in silent classic The Kid.
It’s a trope that often lends itself to gloopy sentimentality and pat buddy comedy – but writer-director Mike Mills avoids both those pitfalls in his altogether lovely film C’mon C’mon, now out for home viewing after getting rather too little attention in cinemas. It’s a film both comforting and bracing, warming viewers with the feelings of tender uplift that we usually get from stories of people learning to care for each other – before surprising us with uneasy, nuanced questions about 21st-century parenthood and the future we’re leaving our children.
