After Franklin blocks his father Chuck on social media, Chuck "catfishes" his son by impersonating a waitress named Becca online. Chuck then agrees to drive Franklin to Maine to meet Becca, knowing that it might be the last straw in their father-son relationship.
The film premiered at South by Southwest on March 12, 2022.[8][9][10] In April 2022, Magnolia Pictures acquired the film's distribution rights. It was released in theaters on August 5, 2022, and on demand on August 12, 2022.[11]
Reception
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 72% of 89 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "I Love My Dad may take its cringe comedy too far for some viewers, but Patton Oswalt's fearless performance keeps the story anchored in honest emotion."[12]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 58 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.[13]
Todd McCarthy at Deadline Hollywood praised Oswalt's performance, Morosini's screenplay, and the use of social media to refine the show, don't tell technique.[14]The Hollywood Reporter's John DeFore gave positive notes to Morosini's direction and called it "a surprisingly gentle take on a potentially explosive premise."[15] Nick Allen at RogerEbert.com gave it a 3.5/4 and praised Sulewski as the movie's "comic MVP", adding that she "plays into both 'Becca' exaggerations so thoughtfully, that by the third act her actual Becca has a special poignancy and agency."[16] David Ehrlich at IndieWire gave it a B−, praising Morosini for "keeping the perversity of it all intact" and Sulewski's performance to be "elastic", while adding that it would have "been a more satisfying experience had it swerved away from decency and good taste even harder than it already does[...]"[17]
Accolades
At the South by Southwest film festival, the film won the Jury and Audience Awards in the Narrative Feature Competition.[18][19]
