Father and Sons: The Courtships of Four Bachelor Brothers

How did this movie happen? What misguided movie executive decided that a comedy about four grown men acting like 10-year-olds would make for a barrel of laughs? Yet here we are with director Kwon Yeong-sun's bizarre Father and Sons — a ridiculous sitcom about a sporting goods shopkeeper (Kim Hie-gab) whose four overaged bachelor babies dream of being the next Patridge Family. All they need now is a couple of Shirley-Joneses and Susan Deys. (Lyric sample: "My favorite type of girl is more beautiful than I am.")

So which of the longtime children will find true love first? Will it be the oldest son (Yang Hun) who wears a toupee and runs his own barbershop? The rubber-faced second son (Lee Jong-cheol) who drives a spotless taxi? The third child (Kim Twist) who dusts the album covers at a well-stocked record store? Or the baby (Nam Bo Won) who aspires to a gig at Carnegie Hall? Since Father and Sons is a comedy, I felt pretty confident that each would find his match eventually. The overhanging question was — to quote an Abbott and Costello routine — "Who's on first?" If that reference feels out of place, let me explain: This is a farce that's not shy with the insults. (Sample putdown: "You sure like to change your words, like a horse moving its butt.")

The film's got a lot of slapstick, too: roughhousing at the breakfast table, shoving money into a sibling's open mouth, the classic running into closed doors... What it doesn't have is natural romantic interests for its four overgrown boys. The four women who become these men's individual obsessions come aren't yins to their yangs so much as foolish ladies who get suckered into a dismal future. I can excuse the bride-to-be who falls for the guy who knows hypnotism but going gaga for a trumpet-playing bandleader who does blackface? Um, not so much.