The Son in 250 Words or Less

It didn't seem possible to me that a movie starring Hugh Jackman and Laura Dern and Vanessa Kirby and directed by the same dude who gave us Anthony Hopkins' deeply moving turn in The Father (earning that Oscar if you ask me) could've possibly been deserving of the derision it was met with when it premiered in Toronto a couple of months ago... but gee golly damn were the sayers of nay saying nay the right way as far as The Son is concerned. From its shockingly inept script (I never saw the play but this dialogue is so ham-handed I can't imagine it even working on stage, where theatricality can usually work better than it will on film) to Jackman's at times so-bad-its-camp performance, this movie would've probably just been swept aside if lesser hands had made it, but with this big-time crew yeesh what a disaster. And they're pushing for Oscar attention, no less! Just cut your losses and stop embarrassing yourselves, y'all. Dern and Kirby do try valiantly to make their characters and their dialogue make sense, but there's no doing. The Son's the same inane conversation fifty times in a row, so flatly basic in its understanding of human nature that it misunderstands human nature wholly -- it fully circles around to being obscene about mental health by its end. Avoid at all costs.