Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern movie is torture

TORONTO — First Florian Zeller wrote the play “The Mother” about depression. Then, in 2020, he directed “The Father,” a shattering film adaptation of his drama concerning dementia that won Anthony Hopkins an Oscar for Best Actor. And now having its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival is “The Son.”

Please, Post editors, I beg you — do not make me review “The Third Cousin Once Removed”! I can’t take much more chic French ennui!

“Son,” suffice it to say, has got nothing on “Father.” Zeller’s latest mental health movie is an exhaustingly tedious experience in which you check your watch several times a minute while taking breaks from giggling at the clumsy dialogue. The writing is godawful, there is no dramatic build to speak of and the acting collectively amounts to a ceaseless whine, like a dog left home alone during a storm.

The title child is 17-year-old Nicholas (Zen McGrath), whose mom Kate (Laura Dern) has recently discovered that he has been playing hooky from class for an entire month. Overcome with despair, he asks to change high schools and go live with his dad Peter (Hugh Jackman), Kate’s ex-husband who has a new younger wife named Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and a newborn baby boy.

Nick packs up his suitcase and heads to one of those spacious, modern Manhattan movie apartments that infuriate New Yorkers who agonize over whether their 500-square-foot postage stamp can fit a small couch. Beth drinks wine in her airy open kitchen and wears baggy, neutral clothes that look like they came with a free oat milk latte.

After a few weeks, Nicholas appears to be improving, but he still has scary outbursts — and Beth is frightened by him being around her child. He’s not making any friends at school.

“All they’re interested in is parties and having fun. I’m not interested in any of that,” goes one of his lines that could have been written by Siri (Christopher Hampton is the translator).

His parents ask him over and over again “Are you unhappy?” and he tells them over and over again giant red flags such as “I’m not meant for this life” or that he “can’t go on living.” He says he’s overcome by pain. Then, he starts cutting his arm with a knife his stepmom finds under his mattress.

You want to leap through the screen, grab these idiot adults by the shoulders and shake them.

The only responsible option, from the first 10 seconds of this movie to the end, would be to immediately get this poor kid some professional help — even if he violently protests. But these hopeless guardians are as stupid and obtuse as a person could possibly be. Obviously, fixing a problem straightaway does not a movie make. However, we need to understand and sympathize with the rationale behind their misguided choices. Instead, because of poor plotting and development, we hate and resent them. Going on a two-hour journey with these imbeciles is taxing, to say the very least.

No actor is notably good here, either, though McGrath has a through line of genuineness imparted by youthful inexperience. Jackman and Dern give overblown performances that never ring true. Some of the blame goes to the rigidly formal and repetitive script, which is from the French, translated by a British man and spoken by New Yorkers.  

Nicholas says “Am I disturbing you?” three different times. Who is he? Lurch? 

Kirby, a wonderful film actress, is fine but rather ghoulish.

Hopkins also has a small role here as Peter’s negligent father, who’s essentially a “Batman” villain.

Jackman, meanwhile, tends to coast until there is an opportunity to cry or yell, and then he goes to town like Euripides is sitting in the back row.

Zeller’s passion for crafting stories about mental health is a worthy one, to be sure. And his end scene will shake and upset you regardless of how inert, ice-cold and poorly acted the preceding two hours were.  

Doesn’t matter. The overwhelming takeaway regardless is: Like “Father,” do not like “Son.”