The tone comes from "Kramer vs. Kramer" (marital disintegration, child used as a weapon), with extractions from "Doc Hollywood" (the attachment to the setting).
There's no disguising this as anything other than Vaughn's star vehicle...that said, he accomplishes the job. Part of the reason these movies exist is for producers to figure out if they've got a leading man with presence and appeal -- here, they do.
What they got right: the center of this is the father-son dynamic, not the common date movie. Oh, it has all the requisite date movie parts: a romance is established, something drives the couple apart, they are reconciled at the end and we cheer -- but this movie is smart because the adornments of the romance are subservient to the center, not the other way around. There is no offensive melodrama.
What they could have improved: cinematically, there could have been more elements of interest. Kansas is a scenic place, as I know from my own travels there. The most interesting element here is the house, a fine example of a Folk Victorian, circa 1910.
At the finale, there was a huge opportunity to use the landscape and apply a visual reinforcement to the narrative (coming home) -- disappointingly, it never came to pass -- not even one sunflower to admire.
There's no disguising this as anything other than Vaughn's star vehicle...that said, he accomplishes the job. Part of the reason these movies exist is for producers to figure out if they've got a leading man with presence and appeal -- here, they do.
What they got right: the center of this is the father-son dynamic, not the common date movie. Oh, it has all the requisite date movie parts: a romance is established, something drives the couple apart, they are reconciled at the end and we cheer -- but this movie is smart because the adornments of the romance are subservient to the center, not the other way around. There is no offensive melodrama.
What they could have improved: cinematically, there could have been more elements of interest. Kansas is a scenic place, as I know from my own travels there. The most interesting element here is the house, a fine example of a Folk Victorian, circa 1910.
At the finale, there was a huge opportunity to use the landscape and apply a visual reinforcement to the narrative (coming home) -- disappointingly, it never came to pass -- not even one sunflower to admire.