My Father the Hero

This is an adaptation of a French movie, Mon Pere, Ce Heros, which was also a light children's comedy starring Gerard Depardieu.

Strange that a kid's flick gets a PG rating; this film is definitely aimed at girls aged between 14 to 17. It's an amiable-enough 'coming to age' story which has its moments of good comedy, and which manages to stay away from cloying mawkishness. Ignore the PG rating; it's pretty good entertainment for your daughters/younger sisters/adolescent friends.

The story centres around 15-year-old Niki (Katherine Heigl), whose parents have long ago separated. Her father Andre (Gerard Depardieu) flies to the States from France to take her on holiday. He takes her to a beach resort peopled in the main by wrinklies - except for young Ben, who lives along the beach, just a stroll from the old peoples' resort.

Niki desperately wants to impress young Ben. She tells him she is quite a deal older than her 15 years. And she tells him that her father Andre is in fact her lover. Her pathological lying goes on and on, weaving a net which entraps all the main characters. The more they wriggle, the more tightly they are caught in her lies.

That's enough of the plot to give you the idea. Anyone 18 or over will probably find this too slight to worry about.

I remember seeing the French original some years back; I recall that it seemed a degree more subtle and better written and acted. Or maybe that was the effect of the subtitles - perhaps being in French made it seem a bit superior; a tad more mature. But the target audience won't worry about that; this is amiable, though eminently forgettable, viewing.

Buena Vista have given us an anamorphic transfer which does justice to the idyllic holiday beach setting, and which has good shadow and tonal rendition in the numerous night scenes.

It's a slick transfer with no evidence of film-grain at all; it's one of those super-smooth transfer jobs which belies the fact that it must have originally been shot on celluloid.

The sound is adequate; just two-channel stereo, but with good effects placement and with a very clear dialogue channel. There's nothing exceptional here, but certainly nothing at all to complain about.

There are no extra features.

A worthwhile addition would have been the French version of the movie as a bonus feature. There would certainly have been no market for the French version's solo release, but it would have been a very solid augmentation of this issue.

There is a precedent for that sort of bonus feature: the recent release of the stinkeroo movie The Truth About Charlie included as a bonus a terrific anamorphic transfer of the complete movie Charade, the brilliant Cary Grant/Audrey Hepburn thriller on which Charlie was based. Thematic double-features of this type really enhance a DVD's value.

I'd recommend rental only, but the target audience of early-teen girls should enjoy this amiable Depardieu vehicle. There's not much here for anyone else, though.