A scene that gets dropped in casual conversations from non-film-people is the one from Bridesmaids where Kristen Wiig and Rose Byrne have a passive-aggressive mic moment at Maya Rudolph’s engagement party. It’s not the setting that makes it relevant, but the obvious non-confrontational chess playing of one-upping each other. One can witness this in a professional scenario between ambitious co-workers or at a family dinner between rival cousins. It’s a feral skirmish of looking both courteous and superior, but for bystanders, the tension is palpable and uncomfortable. With Tynan DeLong’s Dad & Step-Dad, we enter a new point of reference for tactical word-warfare, this time in mild-mannered men who earnestly adorn themselves in khaki shorts. For those who have returned from these kinds of fights, the film displays the thrashing desire to have the last-sentence punch to establish dominance, which is something we don’t necessarily need but kinda deserve.
In one corner of this boxing ring is Dad Jim (Colin Burgess), who goes on a weekend glamping trip with his 13-year-old son Branson (played by a very-not-13-year-old Brian Fiddyment, who I choose to believe is cast for the emotional stunt safety for some of the hair-tearing conversations to come). In the other corner is Step-Dad Dave (Anthony Oberbeck), who tags along on the trip despite the protesting from Branson’s mother/his girlfriend Suzie (Clare O’Kane). The match between the two isn’t the usual representation of polar opposite partners: the Bill Hader brains versus John Cena brawns, the DiCaprio rags versus Zane riches. Without pointed acknowledgement from the film, one of the earliest jokes that Dad & Step-Dad brings you in is that Jim and Dave are practically the same person (which mirrors the more likely truth that most people have a type). If you were to close your eyes watching this film, hearing them talk to each other sounds exactly like what bickering with your reflection would go like.
What could they be fighting about? As law states: if you say something about anything, there will always be someone who will find something wrong with what you said. Thoughts about what’s best for Branson seem to top the list, but we can see that these men are itching to contribute to anything. Even if it sounds like an objectively awful time, the humor wrestles its way to the top. Watching Dad and Step-Dad out-Dad each other on the topics of weather and barbecuing is like watching two bulldozers who technically have the right of way crash into each other multiple times. Both men share points that are correct and wrong in five different vantage points (the “climax” of their bickering is both sides arguing whether personality exists outside or inside a person — and I promise their points do not sound remotely close to a philosophical musing). In some bizarre way, you don’t want it to stop, as long as you are not within crossfire.
Short in its runtime, Dad & Step-Dad plays like a late-night Comedy Central episode that nearly overstays its welcome. But DeLong keeps the digs as succinct as they should without committing you to secondary insanity. I can’t say if the jokes that come out of this mannerism will stick to a certain type of people familiar with the game, but there are some gut-kickers that exist outside of the shtick. In one scene, Jim and Dave discover that they both play guitar, but when Dave admits that he doesn’t know the name of his brand, Jim’s eyes bugging out is a punchline with shrapnel, inflicting the joke upon himself, the doofuses who proclaim as being a music guy (to be fair, Dave later shouts, “It’s a Yamaha!” which is understandably a nondescript brand of acoustic guitar), and to the Guitar Center tenants who plop themselves in the middle of an aisle to share something they’ve been working on to passerby.
There will be other memorable scenes for those who watch, but one of the sharpest moments is when Suzie finally strolls into the house. Immediately in their conversation, Jim anchors down to human normalcy, making me realize that the peacocking between men is a phenomenon that is too common to ignore. Dad & Step-Dad is a good place to start.
Dad & Step-Dad
2023
dir. Tynan DeLong
78 min.
Available digitally and on demand Friday, 3/22
