Parky at the Pictures (DVD 15/11/2018)

Professor Jae Yong Lee (Joseph Anthony Foronda) is visiting Eero Saarinen's Miller House in Columbus, Indiana with Yale academic Eleanor (Parker Posey) when he collapses and is rushed to the local hospital. As Lee's son, Jin (John Cho), flies in from Seoul and checks into the Inn at Irwin Gardens, 19 year-old Casey (Haley Lu Richardson) meets her mother Maria (Michelle Forbes) off her shift as a cleaner. Now in her early twenties, Casey is working at the Bartholomew Country Public Library with graduate student Gabriel (Rory Culkin), while trying to decide what to do with her life. She adores the architecture of her hometown and is keen to study the subject, but she is reluctant to leave their home in a rundown neighbourhood, as Maria is a recovering drug addict and Casey feels responsible for her. 

Over supper, Eleanor blames herself for Lee falling ill in her care. But Jin (who is an old flame) reassures her that his father is a stubborn man and he should know, as they have never been close and haven't spoken in the year since he left for Korea to work as a publishing translator. He mooches around the Inn and is wandering in the garden when he meets Casey, who offers him a cigarette. She was due to attend his father's lecture and takes Jin to Saarinen's First Christian Church, as they discuss the fact that Columbus is something of a Mecca for architecture buffs. She smiles at his suggestion that everyone in the town is an expert and regrets that most people couldn't care less about the treasures in the midst. 

Among them is her old high school friend, Emma (Erin Allegretti), who drops in to see her at the library. She has been studying away and urges Casey to get out of town as quickly as she can. Gabriel eavesdrops on their chat and sends Casey on an errand to stop Emma from giving her ideas, as he enjoys his conversations with Casey on such topics as the role that interest plays in maintaining an attention span. Bearing this attachment in mind, Casey applies for a museum job and drops Maria off at her second job at a packaging plant. 

Returning to her car, Casey spots Jin. She chases after him and takes him to one of her favourite buildings in Columbus, Saarinen's Irwin Union Bank. When she goes into a tourist guide spiel about the glass structure's modernist significance, however, Jin stops her and insists she tells him why the place moves her. The sound cuts at this point and we only see Casey pondering her response before she starts using her hands to illustrate her points. 

We are permitted to listen in again when the pair reach James Stewart Polshek's Quinco Mental Health Center, which Jin particularly admires. As he describes his views on its healing powers, however, he admits that he only recently read about the clinic in a book he found in his father's hotel room and she teases him for claiming to be disinterested in architecture when he is actually quite keen. 

At the library, Gabriel asks Casey to spend the evening with him. But she has already agreed to stay home with her mother and is concerned when Maria fails to make dinner. She leaves phone messages that go unanswered and goes to the Inn to ask workmate Vanessa (Shani Salyers Stiles) if she's okay. She claims that Maria's phone is out of charge and that she can't come down in person because they have a supervisor on site. 

So, Casey goes to find Jin to show him the Creekview branch of the First Financial Bank, which she remembers creeping into her consciousness when it took her unawares one night. As they gaze at the building, Casey admits that she has limited her horizons to support her mother, who became dependent upon drugs after a broken love affair and even dabbled with crystal meth. She reveals that architect Deborah Berke has offered to help her secure a place at Newhaven University and that she has often thought about leaving, but she genuinely loves Columbus and doesn't feel that Maria is strong enough to resist temptation without her. 

When Maria comes home in the morning without a word of explanation, Casey is concerned. Meanwhile, Jin takes his father's camera when he visits the 25 limestone pillars of Maryann Thompson's Veterans Memorial and he hooks up with Casey to see Saarinen's North Christian Church. He is surprised that she doesn't have a phone with an Internet connection, as only uses it to make calls and uses her computer to look things up. Inside, they discuss religion and monarchy and the contradictions inherent in their association with Modernism. 

Continuing their tour, they take in Stanley Saitowitz's observation tower in Mill Race Park before sitting on a bench by the round lake and walking across the enclosed bridge. Casey asks Jin why he's not at the hospital with his father and he reminds her that they're not in a movie and that nothing dramatic is going to happen to bring him out of his coma. She is taken aback when he admits that he would rather his father died now than recover sufficiently to return to Seoul, where he would feel obliged to care for him. Sensing her dismay, Jin urges Casey to take up Berke's offer and make something of herself. But she regards caring for Maria as a noble calling and chides him for knowing nothing about filial duty. Stung, Jin wanders off alone and Casey feels disappointed in him. 

They hang out with Gabriel and Eleanor during the montage that follows. But the latter suspects that Jin has a crush on Casey and recalls how cute he was when they dated. He kisses her, but she sends him back to his own room, as their moment passed years ago. As he wanders along the corridor, he finds Casey waiting for him and they go for a drive. She detours to the Republic Newspaper Building, where Maria is supposed to be cleaning, and Casey can see through the large windows that Vanessa is there alone. When she tries to leave a message, she is appalled when Vanessa calls Maria to warn her and then fibs to Casey that her mother is somewhere else in the building when she calls back. 

Frustrated by Maria's deception and fearful of what she might be doing, Casey invites Jin to a friend's party. However, he doesn't want to go and she parks in front of her alma mater, Southside Elementary School, and dances frantically to the car radio in the headlights. She doesn't explain her distress and laughs when Jin comments on the brutal functionality of the building. 

Casey crashes in his room and they are disturbed by Eleanor with news that Jin's father has had a setback. While they rush to the hospital, Casey heads home and is put out when Maria demands to know where she's been all night. Returning to the Quinco with Eleanor, Jin asks how long he has to stay and she hugs him with the insistence that he remains to the end so that his father doesn't die alone. He sits on the steps of Charles Franklin Sparrell's City Hall and eats cookies with Casey. She has decided to leave Columbus and he thinks she is making the right decision. 

As they say goodbye, Gabriel tells Casey that he doesn't smoke and had only taken fag breaks to spend time with her. She also has a poignant moment during her last night with Maria, who says she will miss Casey's cooking (with its understated aftertaste) and apologises for her past mistakes in promising not to repeat them. Jin has also made a decision and has taken an apartment to cut down on the costs of staying near his father. He reads at his bedside and tells Eleanor that he will stay for as long as it takes. 

Eleanor has offered to drive Casey to Yale and advise on her studies and she waits in the car, as Casey and Jin make their farewells. He convinces her that Maria is happy she is spreading her wings and she reminds him to stay in touch with news about his father. As they drive away, the camera revisits some of the landmarks before Kogonada closes on a shot of the Second Street Bridge, whose red and white colouring recalls that of the chimney stacks in Yasujiro Ozu's An Autumn Afternoon (1962).

Impeccably composed and paced, this is a delightfully delicate and deceptively deep exercise in reclaiming the birthplace of US Vice-President Mike Pence, In tandem with cinematographer Elisha Christian, the mono-monikered debutant (whose pseudonym seemingly pays homage to Ozu's regular screenwriter, Kogo Noda) not only captures the glorious architecture of Columbus, but also its ambience as both a civic museum and as home to the thousands who, when it comes to buildings, don't know their base from their apex. Indeed, this is a film that should resonate with Oxford audiences, as the colleges mirror the Indiana burg's modernist masterpieces. 

There's a hint of Bill Murray's byplay with Scarlett Johansson's in Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation (2003) in the way John Cho and Haley Lu Richardson interact. But there's nothing coy or calculated about their relationship, as Cho comes to recognise the need to forgive his father in order to move on with his life and Richardson realises that she has been using her mother's dependency to hide her own timidity. What is particularly touching, however, is the way in which Cho comes to appreciate through the eyes of a stranger the magic of a subject that his father had not been able to convey, in spite of his own lifelong passion. 

Although Kogonada adopts a cerebral approach in musing upon issues like female ambition, parental responsibility, culture, environment and the clash between tradition and progress, this is very much a human story, with the discreet devotion of Parker Posey and the drolly articulate Rory Culkin reinforcing the quotidian feel. Even Michelle Forbes makes the most of her limited screen time to offer glimpses into the past Richardson has endured and the future that may well envelope her unless she makes her move. Moreover, she also proves crucial to Kogonada's discussion of class, as she is one of the drones who has to toil inside the works of art that have made Columbus famous.

The dialogue is a little precious in places and Hammock's electro score can be a touch emphatic. But Cho and Richardson (who is splendidly unaware in her shapeless clothes) blend the emotional and the intellectual to such subtle effect that this masterly debut avoids the sterility that Michelangelo Antonioni detected in urban living to temper the cynicism of Kubrick and Godard with the low-key humanism of Ozu and Kore-eda.

A couple of months ago, we discussed Adam Rifkin's The Last Movie Star, which was written specifically for the late Burt Reynolds to guy his good ol' boy image. But first-time scenarists Logan Sparks and Drago Sumonja pay more respectful tribute to Harry Dean Stanton in Lucky, which marked the directorial debut of John Carroll Lynch, who will be familiar to many as Frances McDormand's husband in the Coen classic, Fargo (1994). In what turned out to be his last picture, Stanton was joined on the 18-day shoot by several august members of the character actors' union and he clearly revelled in playing a role that alluded to so many of his past performances. But, while it affords the 89 year-old a fitting showcase for his distinctive talent, this is a tad too slender and mannered to be more than a passing pleasure. 

Having performed his morning routines, including some yoga exercises in his smalls, Lucky (Harry Dean Stanton) walks steadily through his rundown Arizona town to the diner, where Joe (Barry Shabaka Henley) chides him about his smoking, Loretta (Yvonne Huff) serves him creamy coffee and waitress Pam (Pam Sparks) helps him with the first of the day's crosswords. Popping in to buy milk from Bibi (Bertila Damas), he goes home to watch his quiz shows on TV and phone a friend to help him with the peskier clues in his puzzle. 

Fascinated by the concept of realism, he goes to the bar owned by Elaine (Beth Grant) and discusses the dictionary definition with barman Vincent (Hugo Armstrong) and Elaine's beau, Paulie (James Darren), They are interrupted by the arrival of Howard (David Lynch), who is concerned because his 100 year-old tortoise, President Roosevelt, has gone missing. The others tease him about it, but Lucky is sympathetic, even though he wouldn't have a pet himself and lambastes Paulie when he says that animals are good for the soul.

Rising next morning, Lucky is bewitched by the flashing red 12:00 on his coffee maker and collapses. Dr Christian Kneedler (Ed Begley, Jr.) can find no physical reason for the episode and tells Lucky that he is remarkably fit for a drinking smoker of his age and that he should accept that getting old is all part of an inevitable process. Lucky rejects the idea of a home help and is nonplussed whe Kneedler gives him a lollipop for being a good boy, Nevertheless, he sucks it, as he sighs at the prospect of his unstoppable decline. 

Peeved that some kids are sat in his spot at the diner, Lucky refuses to let Joe and his staff fuss over him because of his health scare and he storms out. Bibi invites him to her son's 10th birthday party - Lucky calls him Juan Wayne (Ulysses Olmedo) - and he says he'll see how he feels on Saturday. Back home, he calls his buddy to regale him with an anecdote about shooting a mockingbird with a misfiring BB gun when he was a kid and he still feels sad when he thinks of the silence he inflicted on the world with his careless action. 

In the bar that night, Lucky mocks Vincent when he tries to interest him in watching Deal or No Deal. But he completely loses his rag when he sees Howard talking to lawyer Bobby Lawrence (Ron Livingston), who is attempting to sell him life insurance. When Lawrence fails to show any regret for the fate of President Roosevelt while Howard describes how he has carried his coffin on his back for his entire life, Lucky challenges him to a fist fight and goes outside to wait for him. Paulie comes out to persuade him to forget the beef and go home. But, knowing that Paulie is a reformed party animal, Lucky follows him to the flashy club across the road and looks down the stairs into its red-tinted interior. 

Waking with a jolt, Lucky rises to phone his pal. But it's too early in the morning for him to answer and, as Johnny Cash's `I See a Darkness' plays on the soundtrack, Lucky stubs out a half-smoked cigarette and looks frail and afraid as he huddles under the blankets. When he doesn't show up at the diner, Loretta comes to his remote bungalow to check up on him. He is watering a plant in wellington boots and his underwear and she insists on coming inside to sit with him for a while. They smoke a joint and watch pianist Liberace on TV and Loretta is taken aback when Lucky reveals that he helped him see that it doesn't matter who you sleep with if you have talent. When he confides that he's scared, however, she gives him a hug before heading back for her shift. 

Now occupying a booth at the diner, Lucky tells Joe about an adolescent panic attack when he was alone at his aunt's place. He asks Joe if he ever wonders about the time before he was born, but he is distracted when Lawrence comes in for a coffee. The lawyer tries to make small talk and Lucky tells him he prefers awkward silences. But Lawrence persists and they get chatting after Lucky tells him about his fall. Having narrowly missed hitting a garbage truck a few years back, Lawrence claims to know how he feels. However, Lucky sees through his ruse when Lawrence explains about making provision for his demise and wonders how saving his family the worry about paying for his cremation will benefit him because he'll be dead. 

Ordinarily on his way home, Lucky stops to shout abuse through the door of a yellow-fronted store. Today, he's distracted by Fiona, a dog chained up outside a pet shop. The female owner shows him round and he inquires about mockingbirds and tortoises before taking an interest in a box of crickets that are sold as reptile food. That night, having played a mournful version of `Red River Valley' on his harmonica, Lucky settles down to sleep with the crickets he has bought to spare them a grisly fate chirruping on the bedroom blind.

Next day at Joe's, Lucky spots ex-Marine Fred (Tom Skerritt) and they trade Second World War stories. Lucky had been a cook on an ammunition ship that had escaped a collision with a kamikaze plane when small arms fire killed the pilot. Fred remembers the locals flinging themselves off the cliffs on a liberated island because the Japanese had warned them that the Americans would rape and kill them. One small girl had popped out of a foxhole with a broad smile and Fred had commented to a colleague that someone was pleased to see them. But he learned she was a Buddhist who had somehow summoned joy at the prospect of death. The two men sit in silence and reflect on what they had seen and those who didn't survive to chinwag in a backwater diner. 

Seizing the moment, Lucky sets the timer on his coffee maker and goes to Juan's birthday party. As a Mariachi band plays in the garden and the boy whacks a stick across a piñata donkey, Bibi introduces him to her mother, Victoria (Ana Mercedes), who is delighted that he speaks a little Spanish. Lucky looks on as the guests serenade Juan and he blows out the candles on his cake. But he surprises everyone when he launches into a tremulous rendition of the Mexican folk song, `Volver Volver', and the band stand behind him to provide accompaniment, as everyone joins in with the chorus and gives Lucky a warm round of applause at the end. 

Still feeling a warm glow, Lucky heads to the bar. Howard reveals that he has realised that his tortoise hasn't left him but has merely gone off to do something important and will return if it suits him. Lucky goes to smoke and Elaine threatens to bar him for breaking the rules. He denies being ejected from another watering hole for the same offence and gets into an argument with Elaine about rules not mattering when the universe disappears into a state of `ungatz' nothingness. Everyone pauses for a second at the magnitude of his utterance before Elaine smiles wrily, as Lucky lights up and wanders outside after taking a single defiant drag. 

On his morning constitutional the next day, Lucky pauses in front of the yellow arch and we see it's the bar from which he's been banned. He shrugs as the sprinklers come on and cascades over a statue in the courtyard. Wandering into the scrubland, Lucky pauses in front of a large cactus and turns to the camera to smile. As he wanders off, President Roosevelt pads into shot and continues on a progress that may still have another century to go. 

Harry Dean Stanton could not have wished for a better way to end his remarkable career and he responds to this plum role with an affecting display of tetchy vulnerability. He is splendidly supported by a self-effacing ensemble and by John Carroll Lynch's knowing direction. Yet, while this considered saga is never anything less than engaging and accomplished, it somehow feels like the pilot episode of a quirky sitcom that is destined to be cancelled after its second season. 

There are undeniable truths about mortality, remembrance, regret and community in the screenplay and the manner in which Stanton stumbles towards them is often affecting. But, despite the well-drawn characterisation, there are also sequences that seem to have been included to give each member of the supporting cast their chance to shine. The encounters with Ron Livingston's unctuous insurance peddler are particularly strained, as does James Darren's account of how Beth Grant plucked him from the jaws of self-destruction. But Ed Begley's medical consultation, Yvonne Huff's doobie call and Tom Skerritt's combat reminiscence ring gently true and chime in more naturally with Stanton's gradual coming to terms with his past, present and future. 

Photographed by Tim Suhrstedt with a poise and clarity that reinforces the sleepiness of the town and immediacy of Stanton's realisations, the action is edited with a shambling grace by Slobodan Gajic that finds echo in Elvis Kuehn's score. Almitra Corey's interiors are also impeccably designed. Yet one line stands out. As Stanton sits in Begley's surgery, an old woman played by Otti Feder shuffles across the waiting-room on a Zimmer frame. She plonks herself down in a chair and glares at Stanton before hissing a single word `Why?'

Jim Hosking divided the critics with his debut feature, The Greasy Strangler (2016). He has repeated the feat with his sophomore outing, An Evening With Beverly Luff Linn, although the numbers in the `nay' camp have increased considerably. Consequently, only those who buy into the determinedly eccentric universe inhabited by Hosking's largely resistible characters will be awaiting his third offering with any sort of anticipation. 

Lulu (Aubrey Plaza) works in the fast-food bar managed by her husband, Shane Danger (Emile Hirsch). However, when the area manager demands staff cutbacks, Shane fires Lulu and retains the services of hopeless underlings Carl Ronk (Sky Elobar) and Tyrone (Zach Cherry). At home, Lulu mocks Shane for having a smaller cashbox than her brother, Adjay Willis (Sam Dissanayake). So, he dons a blonde wig and some sunglasses to steal the box from Adjay's convenience store and makes a less than speedy getaway. 

Having recognised his brother-in-law, Adjay sends Colin Keith Threadener (Jemaine Clement) to recover his property. However, Lulu has seen a TV commercial for an evening's entertainment with Beverly Luff Linn (Craig Robinson), who just happens to have been her boyfriend before she met Shane. So, when Colin comes to the house to collect the box, Lulu grabs his gun and forces him to drive her to the Morehouse Hotel, where Beverly is due to perform for `one magical night'.

Receptionist Lawrence Doggi (Jacob Wysocki) gives Lulu and Colin a twin room and she asks her Antipodean accomplice to give her a massage and protect her from her desperate pursuers. Colin claims he does this sort of thing for a living and she feels safe in his care. However, she dislikes the way he gets food stuck in his moustache and is reluctant when he suggests that they sit with Beverly and Rodney at the hotel bar. The former recognises Lulu, who had barely been able to control herself while watching him swim in the heated pool. But he only communicates through grunts and Rodney is too busy explaining the nature of their platonic partnership to notice that Lulu's eyes have welled with tears and that Beverly has become so agitated at seeing her again that he has a severe attack of wind. 

Deciding to postpone the show for a night, Rodney puts Beverly to bed after catching him writing a letter. Meanwhile, Shane has found a box of keepsakes in Lulu's underwear drawer and recognises Beverly in several snapshots. He goes to the Morehouse in search of his wife, but she refuses to have anything to do with him. Instead, she goes to dinner with Colin, who tells an interminable story about how his grandmother had used sweets to potty train him. As they return to the room, Lawrence delivers a letter from Beverly asking Lulu to meet him by the pool. She slips away from the sleeping Colin, only for Rodney to swim towards her wearing clown make-up and he warns her to stay away from his partner. 

The next morning, Lulu asks Lawrence to hand deliver a message to Beverly, but hotel manager Kennedy Gordon (John Kerry) gives it to him at breakfast and Rodney is immediately suspicious. He sends Beverly to the gym to get ready for his performance and Lulu gets angry with Colin when he reveals that he flipped him the finger through the window. Meanwhile, Adjay comes to the diner with a henchman, who punches Shane in the nose for failing to recover the money. 

Rodney informs Kennedy that he will need to delay the show for another night and Lulu snaps at Colin when he tries to cheer her up in the bar. When she retires to bed, Colin gets chatting to Paulette (Bettina Devin), who likes the anecdotes that Lulu finds so dull and they have sex in the laundry room. However, she turns out to be a prostitute and charges him $50 for the privilege.

Having no filter, Colin tells Lulu that Paulette had given him a discount to lose his virginity. But she is not interested, as she is annoyed at having seen Beverly's ex-wife (Maria Bamford) in the lobby. She had been summoned by Rodney in the hope her presence would calm Beverly down. But he is less than pleased to see her and growls as he watches her drive away. However, he is committed to going ahead with the show and responds positively when Rodney tells him how much he loves him and how magical the night is going to be. 

In their room, Lulu tells Colin that Beverly had been her tutor and that she had fallen in love with his poetry. However, during a dream holiday to an island full of exotic birds, he had disappeared while swimming and she had always presumed he had drowned. Thus, when she learned he was alive, she had to come and see him perform and Colin is hurt by the passion of her story because he has developed a crush on her that seems destined to be unrequited. 

He reserves seats on the front row, as Shane and Carl arrive in their wigs to sit at the back of the auditorium, while Tyrone sneaks up to Lulu's room with Hilda the waitress (Kirsten Krieg) to steal back Adjay's cashbox. Kennedy welcomes the audience and Rodney takes to the stage with six small children to form a guard of honour for Beverly, who arrives wearing a green tartan costume and a tam o' shanter. He takes his seat and launches into a couple of twee ditties that reduce Lulu to a quivering wreck. Speaking normally, Beverly explains that he met Rodney in Aberdeen and they formed a close bond. But he will always be in love with Lulu and pauses to wish her happy birthday. 

At that moment, Shane runs forward with a cake and Rodney gets so cross that the show has been interrupted that a fight breaks out with Carl, Shane, Rodney and the show's diminutive producer, Mitch Shemp (Michael D. Cohen). During the melee, Beverly slips away and Lulu follows him back to his room to demand an explanation for his disappearance. He insists he had to break away from her and she is crestfallen. But Colin isn't satisfied with the story because he knows Lulu will never have feelings for him while she is still besotted with Beverly.  

He goes to the bar where The Captain (Bruce Paz) makes him a special cocktail. Lulu comes to join him and they dance wildly to White Lion's `Love Don't Come Easy' before returning to their room. Lulu dozes off while Colin is readying himself in the bathroom, so he covers her up and climbs into his own bed. As he turns off the light, however, Lulu tells him that she loves him and he replies in kind. The following morning, Rodney thinks Beverly has died in the passenger seat when they stop for snacks at a petrol station. But he is only in a deep sleep and the pair drive off into the sunrise chortling happily. 

Scripted by Hosking and David Wike, this shaggy dog story is more intent on amusing than its predecessor, which set out to shock and provoke. However, the deadpan delivery style returns along with the blend of absurdity and stylisation that sets Hosking's films apart. A lot of gags fall flat and there are stretches when the action becomes becalmed, particularly when the focus returns to Shane and his oppos. But this meanders along to its own rhythms, which are cannily counterpointed by Andrew Hung's left-field score and the accompanying soundtrack choices. 

Much depends on the commitment of the cast and Aubrey Plaza and Jemaine Clement make an unconventionally sweet pair, while Matt Berry and Craig Robinson achieve a cockeyed chemistry that relies heavily on Berry's genius for the offbeat and the grunting Robinson's eloquent expressions. Emile Hirsch hams up a treat as the hapless husband, although some of the support playing is markedly less accomplished. Clearly Hosking has watched a lot of early David Lynch and the complete works of John Waters. But he has created his own milieu, in conjunction with Jason Kisvarday, who also served as production designer on The Greasy Strangler. Nanu Segal is also on the same wavelength, as she keeps the camerawork simple, but luxuriant to make the most of the 1970s-inflected interiors and Christina Blackaller's quirkily coloured costumes. 

At one point, Colin tells Lulu, `Although I don't know what what's going on here, I'm having a great time.' Not everyone in the audience is going to agree with him. For all his Marmite qualities, however, Hosking's aesthetic and wit are too distinctive to ignore. Thus, he can be excused the tiresome fart and coughing gags and the surfeit of longueurs. But much will depend on what he does next time out.

Despite making three series of The Trip (2010-16), Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan have always denied that they are a double act and they prove the point by turning up in separate features this week. Neither picture is particularly successful at exploring its underlying themes in any depth and, despite both films containing synchronised swimming sequences, genuine laughs are at a premium in each instance. However, Brydon's Swimming With Men is much more grounded in recognisable reality than Coogan's Ideal Home, which strains so hard to seem insouciant about the casting of two straight stars as a gay couple raising a 10 year-old boy that it comes as something of a surprise to discover that the story has been based on the director's own experiences. 

Arriving so soon after Gilles Lelouche's Sink or Swim played at Cannes, Oliver Parker's Swimming With Men will doubtlessly be the subject of several jokes about waiting for a film about blokes synchronised swimming and two coming along at once. Sharing producer Stewart Le Maréchal with Dylan Williams's documentary, Men Who Swim (2010), this cosy exercise in male bonding can hardly be said to be original. But, after a pair of St Trinian's reboots (2007 & 2009), a third career Oscar Wilde adaptation (Dorian Gray, 2009), a Johnny English sequel (2011) and that execrable Dad's Army remake (2016), this flabby wallow in middle-age angst marks Parker's return to novelty for the first time since I Really Hate My Job (2007).

Accountant Rob Brydon is bored with his job in the City and frustrated that wife Jane Horrocks has gone off sex since becoming involved with local politics. Convinced she is having an affair with council colleague Nathaniel Parker, Brydon arrives late at the party she has thrown to celebrate her election and receives a lecture about failing to support his wife in her bid to do some good for the community. Teenage son Spike White is concerned that his parents are drifting apart and calls Brydon away from swimming at the municipal pool to disrupt a cosy meeting that Horrocks is having with Parker in their home. 

The best that Brydon can do to impose himself, however, is to confiscate the wine from the kitchen and check into a cheap hotel. He gets fighting drunk on gin the following night and is greeted on the step by a confused Horrocks, who shuts the door when Brydon can't bring himself to say that he still loves her. Returning to his hotel room beside the bottle bank, Brydon resumes his mundane existence. But, at the baths, he spots a male synchronised swimming team and he offers them a little locker-room advice on how to improve their latest routine. He suggests that they need to apply some mathematical logic to the choreography and is invited to join the ranks alongside estate agent Rupert Graves, retired widower Jim Carter, builder Daniel Mays, gay dentist Adeel Akhtar, the taciturn Chris Jepson, the enigmatic Ronan Daly and the rascally Thomas Turgoose, who is much the youngest member of the troupe.

A montage involving desk calendar pages shows Brydon counting the hours until his first session with his new pals and he finds himself enjoying the banter, as he masters the basic floating and water-treading techniques and familiarises himself with the rules of Swim Club. After a couple of sessions, Brydon learns that they have been asked by pool attendant Charlotte Riley to perform at a children's party. Despite the lack of enthusiasm among the dads expecting a female team, Graves is pleased with their performance, even though it ends with one of the kids spotting some faecal matter floating on the surface. 

Moreover, they are commended by Riley's friend, Christian Rubeck, who just happens to be a member of the Swedish men's synchronised swimming team. He claims that they should become the British entrants at the forthcoming world championships in Milan and the gang discuss their prospects poolside over the leftover jellies and fairy cakes. Graves is keen, but Mays appears to put the mockers on the situation when he reveals how freezing during the FA Youth Cup Final has left him with a lifelong fear of competition. A conference telephone call during working hours forces him to confront his demons, however, and Brydon is grateful for the distraction, as boss Robert Daws shows him newspaper reports about Horrocks crusading against library cuts and tries to involve him in a client's shady tax shelter scheme. 

Graves asks Riley to coach them and she puts them through gruelling sessions in the gym and on a climbing wall. She also gives them a demonstration with her own troupe and they have misgivings that they will ever be able to compete, especially when they make a mess of a wilting flower routine devised by Akhtar. Brydon also has his doubts when he gets cramp in the pool. But Riley confides that Swim Club means a lot to chaps like Carter, who has hidden from the others the fact that his wife died a year ago. 

Brydon has hardly given Horrocks a thought since he started swimming and he barely registers a flicker when White informs him that he thinks she wants a divorce. In fact, Horrocks is throwing herself into a protest against service cuts and she is taken aback to discover that her husband is missing meetings to attend practice sessions. She tries to snap Brydon back into facing reality and he moves out of the hotel to cut down his expenses. However, Graves sees him wheeling his suitcase around and invites him to stay on his houseboat, where he reveals that he was taken to the cleaners by his ballerina wife and now has limited access to his daughters. He also explains how Mays feels responsible for Turgoose after catching him stealing from his site. But Brydon ducks the opportunity to discuss his own plight and focuses on the fact they only have two days before they fly to Italy.

A potential crisis arises when Turgoose shows up for training with an electronic ankle tag and they have to hide him from the police when he breaks a curfew. But they survive a major bust-up and Brydon has time to quit his job before meeting up at the airport in their team suits. Horrocks is astonished when White shows her a news clip about the championships, as she had thought that Brydon was fooling around when he presented her with tickets to Milan. 

However, there's no sign of her in the crowd when they arrive at the arena and Brydon has to choke down his disappointment. Riley gives them a last pep talk and wishes them luck before Mays has a panic attack and is only convinced to participate by Brydon reminding him that they are part of a team that has helped him come to terms with his mid-life crisis and fears of ageing and failure. Buoyed by the sentiment that they are doing this for themselves and each other, they take to pool and Riley whoops frantically poolside, as the crowd applauds a routine that concludes with a triumphant back flip after a shaky start. 

The Brits come second to the Swedes and Carter grumbles that they have been robbed. But they all end up in the pool in their suits to celebrate after Graves plucks up the courage to kiss Riley. As Carter joins Brydon at the edge of the pool, he urges him to win Horrocks back and the troupe join him in performing a dance in the middle of a protest rally on the concourse in front of the fountain beneath the council chamber balcony. Turgoose has to scarper before the cops catch up with him, but Brydon gets to reassure White that he's not gay and sock Parker on the jaw before making up with Horrocks to the delight of swimmers and demonstrators alike. 

Clinging to the coat-tails of Paul Cattaneo's The Full Monty (1997), this is a pale imitation that rarely manages to convince, let alone charm. Screenwriter Aschlin Ditta must have spent hours taking notes from Simon Beaufoy's infinitely superior script, as he strives forlornly to turn the problems of a bunch of unremarkable blokes into a declaration on the state of the nation. But there is a whopping disconnect between reality and a story world that blithely ticks off hot-button topics like the crisis of post-millennial masculinity, tax evasion, sexual identity and local government cuts without discussing any of them in meaningful depth. 

It hardly helps that Ditta avoids providing any backstory for the majority of the swim team or that he sentimentalises those he elevates from cipher status with a passing revelation. But the biggest problem he fails to solve is the utter resistibility of Brydon's self-absorbed bean counter, who is motivated by his own priorities even while delivering the `in this together' speech that keeps Mays onside. Jealous of his wife's success, he risks ruining her reputation by leaving home and demonstrates scant interest in being a father to his son. Even the climactic grand gesture is all about him, as he draws attention to himself and away from the protest that Horrocks has organised to avert library closures. In truth, rather than melting her heart, this very public display of egotism should have earned Brydon a withering look of disdain and an envelope full of divorce papers. 

This isn't, of course, how screen comedy works and Graves and Riley also become an item, even though there isn't an iota of chemistry between them. Similarly, Turgoose is allowed to get away scot free in a crass two-finger gesture to the establishment that sums up the picture's lazy attitude to both plotting and plausibility. Yet, the ensemble performances are willing enough, with Mays and Carter standing out, if only because their cut-outs are marginally less cardboard than their confreres. David Raedecker's photography is little more than functional, although Parker struggles to convey the effort and elegance involved in the routines. He relies somewhat inevitably on top shots and underwater close-ups without ever succeeding in placing the viewer at the heart of the action. Thus, while this passes the time easily enough, it falls a fair way short of Men Who Swim (which was shown under the BBCs Storyville banner as Sync or Swim), whose Stockholm Arts Swim Gents cameos here as the Swedish squad.

Revisiting territory he had previously explored in David Wain's Role Models (2008), Paul Rudd steps into Brydon's shoes to provide Steve Coogan with a sounding board in Ideal Home. However, their contrasting styles prove difficult to mesh in a cornball confection that showcases the duo's determination to demonstrate how right-on they are by essaying gay men with a penchant for coupling on a bear rug rather than any sense of comic or romantic chemistry. 

When wastrel father Jake McDorman is busted by the cops for beating up a hooker in Albuquerque, 10 year-old Jack Gore avoids being placed in social care by schlepping across New Mexico to Santa Fe, where grandfather Steve Coogan hosts a basic cable cookery show that's directed by his longtime partner, Paul Rudd. The couple bicker constantly, but also throw the trendiest dinner parties and it's into one of these gatherings that Gore wanders carrying a plastic bag containing a bible, a notebook and a wrap of cocaine. 

Unsure what to do with a surly tweenager who won't reveal his name, Coogan takes him on a shopping trip to Walmart and even endures an expedition to Taco Bell after McDorman refuses to let Gore see him in jail. But, even though he bonds more naturally with the kid after learning that he witnessed his addict mother fall to her death from an upper-storey window, Rudd is hurt that Coogan has withheld this part of his past and is far from convinced that parenting is compatible with their lifestyle. Yet, when Child Protection agent Alison Pill comes to the ranch, it's Rudd who assumes the mantle of responsibility when she has concerns about Gore having access to their porn stash. He also takes Gore's schooling seriously, as well as teacher Lora Martinez-Cunningham's suggestion that he needs to find some friends of his own age. 

Coogan solves this problem by inviting some local families to the filming of an Indian party episode of his show and they soon find themselves attending barbecues and play dates at houses across the neighbourhood. Indeed, Coogan becomes so used to having Gore around that he explores the possibility of securing custody when McDorman declares that he has found God and plans taking his son to live with a religious community in Arizona. Having realised how much he cares about the boy after having a panic attack after preventing him from being hit by a speeding motorcyclist, Rudd shares Coogan's concerns. But he is more of a realist, even though he also gets a fit of the giggles during a dressing down from Martinez-Cunningham after Gore uses inappropriate language during a show-and-tell presentation about living with two gay men. 

Thus, when McDorman shows up on Christmas Eve to take Gore away, Rudd decides that he can't go on living with Coogan (having caught him crying on the shoulder of houseboy Evan Bittencourt) and accepts a job to work for rival cook Rachael Ray in New York. Having striven to remain calm while Rudd packs his belongings, Coogan drapes himself over the bonnet of the car taking him to the airport and Rudd realises he has no option but to return home when he sees Coogan's silly grin on the jacket of his new book. While they are having a make-up supper, McDorman crashes his car while under the influence and a judge grants Coogan and Rudd custody. Driving back to the ranch, Gore surprises them both by requesting a gourmet dinner to celebrate his return. 

Accompanied by 10cc's `The Things We Do For Love' a montage of happy LGBTQ+ family photographs presages the closing credits and reaffirms the entirely laudable message of Andrew Fleming's syrupy sitcom. Yet, in making the point that even neurotic gay men are quite capable of raising a child, Fleming seems set on dealing in stereotypes that were dubious when William Friedkin made The Boys in the Band (1970) and positively antediluvian when Mike Nichols remade Édouard Molinaro's La Cage aux Folles (1976) as The Birdcage (1996).

Three decades have passed since Fleming debuted with Bad Dreams (1988). But, despite the early promise shown in Threesome (1994) and The Craft (1996), he has mostly worked in television and feature outings like Dick (1999), The In-Laws (2003) and Barefoot (2014) have received mixed reviews. As was the case with his previous collaboration with Coogan on Hamlet 2 (2010). But, here, Fleming allows Coogan to play a camp Alan Partridge, as he minces and preens his way through a string of handcrafted quips that serve only to emphasise the artificiality of the situation.

The sketchy characterisation further exposes the fact that Coogan and Rudd are always acting and rarely come across as plausible people, let alone a credible couple. Given little more to work with than the odd shrug and grimace, Jack Gore is similarly ill-served as the petulant tyke, who has seen more grim reality in his short life than the prissily pampered Coogan and the soft-centredly pragmatic Rudd could possibly envisage. Consequently, there's little sense of tension as Gore acclimatises to his new surroundings and absolutely no feeling of jeopardy when he is predictably whisked away. Fleming's intentions are admirable. But his film is passé, patronising and unfunny.