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Table for Five (1983)

Director: Robert Lieberman

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Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Prodigal parent Voight comes to reclaim his kids from their mother and her new husband, and scoops them off on a plush Mediterranean cruise. Yes, it's another of New Hollywood's hymns to the Joys of Fatherhood, though this time potential custody tussles are forestalled by conveniently dispatching the wife in a car crash. Voight's shipboard romance is kept safely marginal too, and the final happy family - three kids, two fathers - looks decidedly bizarre. Lieberman pads out thin material with a welter of reaction shots and sequences of Voight mooning around looking very, very sad. What's worse, he seems to have scant confidence in the potency of his characters' emotions, attempting to make them into something monumental by having Voight's life crumble amid the more spectacular ruins of Western civilisation. This is essentially soap opera with fancy production values and grandiose pretensions: the result is the purest kitsch.

Author: SJo

Time Out Film Guide


User reviews of this film

  • cuzzikid said...
    Posted on Jul 03 2010 06:06 Having children and being divorced, this touched so many places in my heart. One of my favorite scenes is when the father (Jon Voight) was dancing with his daughter. I really loved this movie and can watch it over and over.
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