Once upon a time, I attended a university in the best basketball conference in the nation. The university I attended consistently sported the worst basketball team within its celebrated athletic peer group. While the best teams in the conference vied for national championships, my alma mater struggled against local out-of-conference (and sometimes out-of-division) opponents. When conference play arrived, the contests were often one-sided and humiliating. My friends and I attended them anyway, cuz whatchagonnado? There’s some great basketball being played out there, just not by us.
Because of the prestige of the conference, all conference play was required to take place in a venue that seated at least 8,500 people. This was a conference rule. Games between two random members of the conference would invariably sell out. Ours did not. For some reason, when your team is that bad, people don’t even show up when the opponent is that good. On one such occasion, my friends and I noted the sparse crowd and treated ourselves to much better seats than our tickets claimed. On this night, our fellows were surprisingly competitive, making a game of it for at least fifteen minutes. At this point in the contest, our coach searched the bench and found a player we’re gonna call “Cooper.” When Cooper was summoned into the line-up, the leather-lunged friend next to me stood up and shouted for the entire underpopulated arena to hear: “OH NO! NOT COOPER!”
Three rows below us, a large middle-aged woman turned around and angrily mouthed at us, “THAT’S MY SON!” We were a bit taken aback, all except the leather-lunged friend who –under his breath- muttered just loud enough for us to hear, “Yeah? Well he sucks.”
And that’s what I think about when I hear the words “My Son.” It certainly won’t conjure up anything from this movie. Not then, not now, and not in the future. But, lemme tell ya, my story is better than this one. This picture comes with the caveat that James McAvoy, playing an estranged father in search of a missing son, was not given a script for this film; he was merely told to react as the plot points happened.
McAvoy should have been given a script. While he is a fine actor, he acts throughout My Son as a character would act instead of how a normal person would. I suppose this 
makes sense if he’s playing a character (and he is), but when you give a guy no script to work with and tell him to react naturally, you’re kind of hoping the guy is essentially playing himself, no?
Edmund (McAvoy) is summoned back to his native Scotland from his perpetual business trip by his ex-wife (Claire Foy) to help find their missing seven-year-old boy. She sent the boy on an overnight camping trip and one night later, the kid was nowhere to be found. So now Edmund shows up to be angry. Angry, angry, angry.
My Son is a frustrating film; we 100% want to sympathize with grieving parents, but –written or not- the screenplay is just.not.good. The police act as if they’re never had a missing person before; there’s a fight for jurisdiction; and disciplining Edmund’s antics seems to take priority over finding a missing child in the critical hours. Several scenes occur in which somebody should definitely be calling the police NOW and is not doing so. At the end of this film, you’re unlikely to have a positive feeling about anything, which would be easier to take if I thought the film were saying anything.
Estranged Edmond pulls an all-nighter
To search for his child ’til dawn’s lighter
Missing kid? That’s ok
But I really must say
“Don’t film with an abducted screenwriter”
Rated R, 95 Minutes
Director: Christian Carion
Writer: Christian Carion, Laure Irrmann
Genre: Investigation?
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Missing children
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Investigators
