When you get booted from a nursing home, it’s probably time to reevaluate your life choices. Of course, if this should ever happen, odds are you’re too old to undergo that kind of self-examination … if your memory remains in tact, maybe just understand that you screwed up somewhere.
Don Servando Manuel Guadalupe Villegas de la Garza (Héctor Bonilla) – try calling him something shorter, I dare you- is well beyond retirement-age old, but surprisingly and unfortunately spry. The biases that dominated his middle age have culminated in a simmering kettle of uneasiness through his oatmeal years; the nursing home staff and fellow residents treat him as one might treat an ugly nudist or wandering skunk. Their fear is not ill-placed; when a new assistant points out the rules of the home, Don Servando cane-whips the poor sap. This last straw leads to expulsion and the hardly welcoming arms of his youngest son, Francisco (Benny Ibarra).
The psychology of the curmudgeon is briefly explored — oh, he was a miserable bastard years ago when there were minor children around, but the personality manifested itself mostly in talk-to-the-hand parenting. As an octogenarian not entirely in control of his environment, he has developed intolerance for everything.
And boy, isn’t dad in for a surprise? “Fran” doesn’t live in a personal fortress with his wife and son in Mexico City; he isn’t married and resides in his girlfriend’s crowded hippie-like compound in the quiet villa San Miguel de Allende. Don Servando was discontent with having to retrieve his own newspaper … guess how he takes to hippies. It’s hard to say what ruffles granddad’s feathers most – the unmarried son, the artist grandson, the stoner slacker, the vegan cuisine, the interracial couple, the homosexual partners – gotta say, it was a cheap thrill/horror to hear the term “pillow biters” in Spanish; is that a common gay-baiting pejorative in every language?
Oh, and you won’t believe this, but it turns out Francisco is, in many ways, just like his 
entrenched bigot of a father. This plays better than it sounds, however, Un Padre No Tan Padre (pretty sure that’s Spanish for “No, Dad! That’s a bad dad!”) is, essentially, discovering the humanity in the aged bigot curmudgeon and losing the humanity in cool hippie dad until they meet somewhere in the middle. The biggest problem with this film is that either you identify with it and then feel guilty for finding your father/grandfather an asshole or you don’t identify with it in which case this action seems superfluous and easily remedied: “why don’t they just send grandpa to another home?”
Un Padre No Tan Padre is cute and watchable, but totes that great baggage of kid-gloves foreign film – why am I watching this? No nudity, no violence, no great star power or production values, no big smiles, nothing of any kind that will elicit a strong emotional response … or even a decent review. I’m stopping now.
♪My grandpa’s back and there’s gonna be a rumble
(Hey, la-di-la, my grandpa’s back.)
The only language he knows is “Grumble”
(Hey, la-di-la, my grandpa’s back.)
We’ve been spreading lies that he never knew
(Hey, la-di-la, my grandpa’s back.)
Were he your dad, I swear you would, too
(Hey, la-di-la, my grandpa’s back.)
Yeah, he knows you live with hippies
When he’s here, new hole he’s gonna rippies♫
Rated PG-13, 94 Minutes
D: Raúl Martínez
W: Alberto Bremer
Genre: It’s funny when dad is an asshole
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Children who fear never getting closure with their own domineering patriarchs
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Patriarchs who don’t get the joke
♪ Parody inspired by “My Boyfriend’s Back”
