Review: Full Grown Men

As with countless recent domestic films about man-children, Full Grown Men contends that its protagonist, Alby (Matt McGrath), needs to act his age, all while treating this pitiably infantile dolt with undeserved sympathy. David Munro’s feature debut, co-written with Xandra Castleton, posits Alby’s immaturity as part of a larger epidemic, with every other person seemingly incapable of growing up, from an amusement park worker (Alan Cumming) bitter at his former employer, to a woman (Deborah Harry) who threw her family away to dress up like a mermaid, to the young special-needs students of Alby’s childhood pal Elias (Judah Friedlander) who’ll never become mentally mature adults. The plethora of similar cinematic stories lends weight to Full Grown Men’s depiction of a domestic landscape littered with Peter Pan complexes, but director Munro apparently believes that Alby is an endearingly flawed yet eminently relatable figure, rather than a dimwit whose mushy-headed decision to favor cartoon scribblings and collectible action figures over his loving wife and son is pathetic. Alby walks out on responsibility so he can sit on his memory-impaired mom’s couch watching kung fu (dash?) movies, reconnect with Elias to (half-heartedly) make up for past sins, and travel to theme park Diggityland, a National Lampoon’s Vacation-ish odyssey that blends goofy humor and precious poignancy. The film, alas, hasn’t got a joke worth laughing over or a character worth caring about save for Elias, whom Friedlander admirably refuses to embody as a self-pitying sad sack and, as a result, is the only one in this pretentiously darling little indie dud—full of Crayola-bright colors and earnest guitar-rock—who actually earns our compassionate respect.