Fathers & Daughters 2015

     Jake Davis is a husband and the father of Katie.  Jake is also a novelist and he’s won a Pulitzer Prize.  Jake and his wife get into a bitter argument in their car, Jake is speeding and they get in an accident.  Jake has head injuries and his wife is killed.  Later, Jake checks into a hospital for treatment of seizures caused by his head injuries. He’s there for a year and he’s receiving electro-shock therapy.  Katie goes to live with her mother’s sister, her husband and their two sons.  Katie is grief stricken when her father leaves to go into the hospital.  Elizabeth and her husband William talk to Jake after he returns from his treatments.  They want Katie to live with them and since they are very wealthy, they can do a LOT more for Katie than her penniless father can!!  They also want to adopt Katie!!

     This film depicts Katie as a young girl in flashbacks and in the now as an adult woman at 27 years of age.  Despite his treatments, Jake is still having seizures and he can’t control them or keep them from happening.  Katie has a lot of emotional and judgment issues.  She has lived with the wealthiest people in the world and mourned the absence of both her mother and father.   Katie is a Ph.D. student studying psychology, she working with a young girl but she can’t use any of her knowledge with her own problems?  There is a LOT of drama and star power but this could’ve been a Hallmark Movie??  3* (This movie is OK) 

  

116 min, Drama directed by Gabriele Muccino with Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried, Aaron Paul, Dinae Kruger, Quvenzhane Wallis, Bruce Greenwood, Janet McTeer, Kylie Rogers, Jane Fonda, Octavia Spencer, Jenny Vos, Brendan Griffin, Ryan Eggold, Chris Douglass, Jake Scheib. 

Note:  Imdb 7.1 out of 10, 28% critic 57% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 1 ½*, Metacritic 31 out of 100 with 17 critics 6.3 out of 10 with 18 reviews, Amazon 4.3* out of 5* with 279 reviews, Common Sense Media 3* positive, 2* role models, 2* violence, 4* sex, 4* language 3* drinking, drugs and smoking, age 16+ and 3* of 5*.

Special Note:  Filmed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  There is a mistake with an aerial view of Manhattan showing the Twin Towers.  The film has Katie's mother passing around 1989-1990 and this scene is supposed to be 27 years later?