Father of Invention (2010)

Just perfect...

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

First, I like Kevin Spacey a lot. He's a fine actor. And I like Camilla Belle a lot.But really, Hollywood, please get over everything has to be gay. It is beyond ridiculous and turns a potentially fun movie into yet another propaganda piece for a bizarre cause that no one cares about.98% of us are not gay, don't want to be gay. Leave us alone and stop pushing your absurd agenda on us.Really, so she didn't want to invite her father to her art show because he might offend a buyer but then she invites her uber-feminist lesbian roommate who blurts out to the first customer she finds: "I'm a lesbian!" Really? Really? This is just utter stupidity on the most basic level.These producers/directors should be fired and then flogged, or maybe flogged and then fired.They are just stupid people.And this is a stupid movie.Had potential. Ruined.

This movie is not very believable. A man markets a product that can mutilate people if it is not used correctly. When you see what a man has to do to injure himself with it, Hmm, hard to imagine. After a few people mutilated themselves, you might assume that the news would get around (but, apparently it doesn't).The president of the company goes to jail (for Gross Negligence, not a crime in any state I know), and gets a parole after 8 years. He loses every nickel of his 100s of Millions in court judgments (apparently, he never had the wherewithal to hire a bankruptcy attorney, which would have left him something). No one else is affected at all (including his fellow workers, one of whom is a billionaire because of the ex-president). His wife gets to keep $362 Million (what US state is she living in, where that could happen?).Now, 8 years later, his now-ex-wife has re-married, AND spent her entire $362 Million (with nothing to show for it). OK. His ex and his daughter won't give him even a few minutes of conversation, just belittle him and tell him to leave.Anyway, the plot flounders around with weird stories about people in his new life, including, a woman who claims to be a lesbian, but just broke up with a boyfriend, and has the hots for the ex-president, and is pretty angry when he spurns her sexual advances.The finale is after he starts marketing his new million-dollar product. So, a man markets many infomercial-quality products, goes to jail, and ends marketing a new infomercial-quality product. I was hoping that he would have changed his attitude during the movie.

This film starts off well but the deteriorates about halfway through and falls flat into a clichéd ending.Kevin Spacey was good and I appreciated his humorous performance and physical comedy. Camilla Belle was OK, but bordering on mannequin performance (I have liked her in other movies though). She also needs to gain a little weight. At one point I was distracted by some weirdness in her face - please tell me she did not get botox at her age. Speaking of botox, the other roommate needs to stop with her injections because she looks freakish; she seems pretty otherwise but not a great actress. Heather Graham was OK but her character was one dimensional and not engaging.Johnny Knoxville had some good moments but in a couple shots he looks old and tired. One of the funniest moments if not the funniest moment was Michael Rosenbaum as the ex-boyfriend - WHY was there not more of him??? He can do comedy.Virginia Madsen as the ex-wife was annoying and vapid leaving no reason the viewer would want to care about her in the least. You just want to punch her in the face for squandering $200 million dollars (?) in ten years and having NO money for her daughter at all??? Waste product. It would have been more realistic if the daughter did not connect with her instead of her father. Craig Robinson held his own.The plot is initially interesting and loaded with potential but poor scripting and character inconsistencies bog this storyline.Ending - no climax and a letdown...

"Father of Invention" stars Kevin Spacey as a fabricator, an infomercial king, who combines existing products into new ones. Problem is he was in jail, now he has lost his empire, and lost his family. The key word in the title is father. The entire film is him trying to reconnect with his daughter (Camilla Belle).Spacey has frequently played fathers trying to reconnect with their daughter, the prime example being "American Beauty" (1999). Not that one is likely to confuse the two films, but there's an underlying similarity about the pursuit of success and the pursuit of family. That's what "Father of Invention" is about but it doesn't actually explore those issues.It's also supposed to be a comedy, but because it was just him and his daughter there was nothing clever that catches you off-guard to make you laugh. The daughter (whom, by the way, I have already forgotten her name) lives with two roommates. One is in love with Kevin Spacey (whom I have also forgotten his character's name) and the other is a lesbian. There was no slow reveal for any of this. Those facts were just presented as if they create whole characters.The conflict which this builds to isn't surprising (it's part of the mandate for dysfunctional family dramedies) or even interesting since we never did care for the characters in the first place. "Father of Invention" certainly didn't invent anything and there's nothing special about the daughter or the father.