Fathers and Daughters

Russell Crowe as Jake – a widowed, troubled Pulitzer Prize-winning author trying to raise his daughter alone – is just one of a long list of unconvincing things about this corny, old-fashioned drama.

When we first meet young Katie (Kylie Rogers), she’s barely school age and the centre of a custody battle between Jake and his rich, unfeeling in-laws. Two decades later, she’s played by Amanda Seyfried and experiencing the fallout of her childhood in her personal relationships and especially in her attitude to sex. It’s as if director Gabriele Muccino (‘The Pursuit of Happyness’) and debuting writer Brad Desch saw Steve McQueen’s ‘Shame’ and decided it needed a rambling prequel that unpicked its characters’ psychosexual lives with a thudding lack of subtlety.

The list of co-stars – Jane Fonda, Octavia Spencer, Aaron Paul – is so impressive that it’s hard to know what attracted everyone to such a soapy, cloying script. Yet the soundtrack does include The Carpenters performing ‘Close to You’, so at least this film is brazen about its emotions.