The Family Tree

The Family Tree (2011)

Runtime: 91 minutes

Directed by: Vivi Friedman

Starring: Dermot Mulroney, Hope Davis, Matt Theriot, Britt Robinson

From: Entertainment One

I'll be honest, this is a film that has a cameo from a certain lady, so yes I am continuing my Cook-a-thon. You can make any sort of “wood” jokes you want to, but as I'll mention soon, there's a large ensemble cast, including a bevy of beauties. This has been on the Showtime channels as of late but I decided to rent the DVD for the night from Blockbuster, as I was able to and it was more convenient for me.

I wasn't sure what to expect given that it's only rated 5.1 on IMDb and I've come across some rather negative reviews. However, I thought this was a wildly entertaining black comedy. It was certainly darker than I expected. In short, the plot is about a family (the four people I listed above; the dad is a wimp who works at a crappy job, the mom is a harpy who does charity work but seemingly for shallow reasons, the son is a Bible-loving gun-nut and the daughter looks like Avril Lavigne and acts like it too, being a “tough” lady who has the reputation of being easy). The mom has a sex-related accident and she doesn't remember anything that happened after she got married. That is part of the plot but a lot of it is seeing that not only is the family dysfunctional but there are a lot of weird and wacky people in a random Midwestern town.

The cast includes such people as Bow Wow (yeah, the rapper), Chi McBride, and Keith Carradine; lady-wise, there's Gabrielle Anwar, Jane Seymour, Madeline Zima, Selma Blair, the boobalicious Christina Hendricks, and the aformentioned Ms. Cook, who only appears in one scene, but I was OK with it. A lot of the cast only appear for about a few minutes of screentime each and it's fine as I enjoyed the story quite a bit; I laughed at all the dark humor and screwed-up things you see.

To give some examples, early on you see a teenaged male climb up a tree to spy on Davis sleeping. The guy uses binoculars and unzips his pants... yes, for the second time in a week I've seen a film which has a scene of a guy flogging his dolphin to something perveted. A squirrel startles him and well, he hangs himself via those binoculars and he dies... and his body isn't found right away! You see a female teacher kiss a female student in a school bathroom, a nosering gets ripped out, a guy has sex and he says “Stop” and then says “Hammer time!” It's quite wild and it's also odd, but not in an off-putting manner. There's a lot of comedy but there's also some drama. You may disagree but I thought this was a pleasant surprise.

I'll be back Friday night.