Hugh Jackman and Vanessa Kirby in The Son
(Picture: AP)Where Florian Zeller goes, awards follow. Or so we thought. The Frenchman’s adaptation of his own devastatingly playful, Alzheimer’s-themed play The Father, rightly won Anthony Hopkins a Best Actor award at the Oscars. When Hugh Jackman was cast in Zeller’s next project, one headline read, “ With ‘The Son’, Hugh Jackman’s Best Actor moment has arrived.”
The theory was that the role of Peter Miller – the deluded father of a chronically depressed teen – would bring the 54-year-old Jackman the one big award that eludes him. But no. How did he fail to notice that Zeller and Christopher Hampton’s script, for the most part, is a simplistic, over-earnest mess?
