Metacritic reviews

A well-made, strong three-generation saga that deals with a number of interesting - and sometimes uncomfortable - topics. [27 Oct 1989, p.3F]

The director spends nearly two hours groping for a message, but never finds it, mostly because his conflicts rise and fall in 30-minute segments -- like a Family Ties episode. [27 Oct 1989, p.G5]

Dad is a case of a movie with too much enthusiasm for its own good. If the filmmakers had only been willing to dial down a little, they would have had the materials for an emotionally moving story, instead of one that generates incredulity.

Nothing in Dad moves below the surface. When the inevitable tragedies come, they take their expected forms. And because we have at least some susceptibility and human feeling, we give the expected response. What we are responding to, though, is not so much the film as the issues it raises.

The book too is cluttered and diffuse, but it still has nice, uncompromisingly rough edges to it that this film adaptation has planed away. It was an honest, painful record; it has been nudged into family-style uplift.

Instead of moving the audience, Mr. Goldberg achieves the kind of effect that Jack Benny got when he played his violin. The flesh crawls.

There’s certainly much that’s funny, warm and endearing about Dad, which, based on William Wharton’s novel, deals with the familiar theme of a grown child resolving his sense of duty toward an ageing parent. Unfortunately, prolonged tilling of that emotional terrain and seemingly endless verbalization of feelings diminish most of what’s good about the film.

Goldberg has honorable intentions. But like Tammy Faye's make-up, it's impossible to see beneath his movie's overwrought facade. [27 Oct 1989, p.7]

The film does assert there are some things positive thinking won't conquer, like sickness, senility and death. But it smothers any serious intent in cheap homily, modern mythology and sickly sentimentality.

Everything honest and hard-hitting in the book has been tastefully subverted, and the performances are scaled to meet the script's tiny demands.