Da

Hugh Leonard's stage play translates dully to the screen in this valentine to a dead Dublin father. Da (Hughes) is dead and buried but comes back to exasperate his son Charlie (Sheen), now a successful playwright in New York. The ghost device releases a flood of flashbacks from Charlie's boyhood and young manhood, in all of which ineffectual Da plays the spoiler's part. His prospect of certain sex, for instance, is banjaxed when Da approaches the park bench and, by dint of garrulity, unearths the girl's family history and queers the lad's pitch. Any hope of presenting an emotional exorcism, as Charlie wins through to the realisation that his Da loves him, is shafted by the sheer obviousness of the old man's affection from the start. Mildly entertaining.