Lies My Father Told Me

A distinctly warm-hearted tale of a Jewish childhood in Montreal in the 1920s. Grandfather, a rag-and-bone man, adheres to the old ways, frowning upon the brash commercial instincts of his son-in-law, and winning the favour of his grandson with his whimsical ways. Some attempt is made to sketch in ghetto life and to draw out a child's emotional reading of an adult world. But too often the film merely begs the audience's indulgence, asking it to register no more than its clucking approval or disapproval.