User Reviews

Interesting movie in that it touches on the every day inevitable, such as family members passing away and bad relationships and/or bad feelings with the people we're supposed to be the closest too. The other person that posted about this movie is right, the characters for the most part are just plain awful. They basically make you just want to kick their butts for being such nasty people. Their nastiness practically ruins the movie, but there is one particular scene in the movie involving Patrika Darbo and Judge Rheinhold in the kitchen that saves this movie and makes it worth watching every now and again. It's the kind of scene that made me laugh so hard I cried. It saved the whole movie and thank goodness, because watching Beau Bridges in tight baby blue polyester made me come close to convulsions.

With a title like "Daddy's Dyin'... Who's Got the Will?", one might understandably think that the movie is a comedy. While there are some somewhat lighthearted moments, the movie is actually for the most part a fairly serious drama. Its stage origins are pretty evident, since most of the movie takes place in one basic location, and most of what doesn't take place there is mostly of little to no consequence to the rest of the story. The real problem with the movie, however, is that it's kind of slow and not exactly brimming with a lot of plot. But there are some good moments here and there, such as the two scenes with the family singing around the piano, and the scene with Sara Lee and Clarence having a heart to heart talk. The cast is pretty good, with the best performance comes from Judge Reinhold, who makes his hippie character very likable. In the end, the movie is okay. Just don't sit down to watch it with the feeling that you are going to laugh a lot, however.

Playwright Shores' country-fried comedy is opened up slightly (and pruned) for this low-key filmization. Remsen has suffered a series of mini-strokes and is close to passing away, an oncoming scenario that draws his four children around him, some of who are looking for a chunk of his estate. Lonely hairdresser Harper already lives with Remsen and his mother (!) McClure (in the play, she was his mother-in-law, which made a bit more sense.) Crass, abusive Bridges, Remson's only son, comes to the house with his chubby, but bubbly, wife Darbo. Bible-thumping Wright and oft-married singer D'Angelo complete the sibling quartet. Hippie Reinhold plays the latest of D'Angelo's many conquests. While Remsen slips closer and closer to death, his children bicker and debate about who should get what and who did what to who while simultaneously wondering where the man's last will and testament has landed. Harper does a pretty decent job in one of the less colorful roles. Her hair in frequently inconsistent from frame to frame, but generally she manages to add dimension to her character. Bridges is blustery and appropriately unappealing, though his part comes off as pretty one-dimensional. Darbo fares better as his wife and enjoys scenes of varying degrees of emotion and/or humor. Wright goes for an understated approach to her "praise the lord" type of character and loses a lot of opportunity for laughs (and identification) in the bargain. D'Angelo is excellent at presenting the loose, sleazy, yet needful, person she's asked to take on here while Reinhold tends to be appealing in his offbeat role. McClure's part, a vivid, funny, irascible character on stage is rendered mostly benign in this adaptation and the actress's voice is ill suited to the amusing aspects of the role. What was a tacky, sometimes-rowdy, arresting little comedy on stage is a somnambulistic snooze through most of its running time thanks to a far too laid back directorial style, languid pacing, the removal of various plot threads and lines and a musical score that has basically nothing to do with the time or place nor enhances the action on screen. The comic momentum of the scenes is spoiled by a decision to crosscut action in different locales rather than tell the story in its original form. There are also many lulls in the dialogue and action, with some of the colorful comments removed in the process. Sadly, the actors mostly do not (or were not permitted to) fully inhabit their roles with the necessary gusto to make the film spark. If there's a high point, it would be the burgeoning relationship and the acting scenes between Reinhold and Darbo. It's not a washout, but it's not the rousing, rambunctious comedy it could have been. This same author gave the world "Sordid Lives," which is a bit more outrageous than this story. Carradine appears briefly as a local hunk, a part that was only spoken of in the stage play.