Film

The journey from boyhood to manhood is never easy, especially if you’re a young’un like Bernie (Sulkin): runty, bespectacled and destined to be trapped inside a broad caricature of the director’s own traumatic childhood. (The film is loosely based on Paul Weiland’s youth.) His father, Manny (Marsan), isn’t a strong role model—Pops is phobic about everything from dogs to driving over 25mph—and to make matters worse, Bernie’s bar mitzvah has been scheduled for the same day as the 1966 World Cup finale. Should England miraculously get into the finals, the number of attendees will be somewhere around nil. But as soccer fans and anyone with access to Google knows, the chances of Bernie’s big day being ruined are 100 percent.

Weiland’s decision to enliven a predictable film à clef with Tim Burton–esque flair makes for a promising start, at least until the absurdo-fantastic gestures slip into gratuitousness; the fact that Bernie’s mum is played by Mrs. Burton—Helena Bonham Carter—just invites the sort of comparisons that make you pine for the real thing. Only Marsan adds any oomph: Giving Manny a perpetual catfish scowl and a palpable sense of defeat, the actor makes you believe this is a man hemmed in by his neuroses. He’s the one saving grace in this feel-good slog.