Brian Cox apparently gets a bit sick of being asked in interviews about Succession and playing Logan Roy, which might explain his presence in The Parenting, a film unafraid to do jokes about projectile vomiting alongside a whole slew (spew?) of gags revived from the era of gross-out comedy. Look, this says, I’m an actor, now doing something completely different, alright, because that’s what acting is.
Craig Johnson is the director and Kent Sublette the writer, but it’s the Farrelly or Wayans brothers who really preside over this movie – comedy done with a wink and a how-low-can-you-go chuckle.
It’s a Meet the Parents set-up. Rohan (Nik Dodani) and Josh (Brandon Flynn) are a gay couple heading off to meet each other’s parents for the first time at a big old mansion they’ve hired for a weekend, up in the back of beyond, unaware that the place harbours an unquiet spirit, which we’ve seen in the pre-credits sequence dragging a nice 1980s family off to their dooms in its talons.
Cox plays one half of Rohan’s parental duo, with Edie Falco as the mother. Josh’s mother and father are played by Lisa Kudrow and Dean Norris. Though Cox is definitely, possibly defiantly, not Logan Roy – Frank is a strangely abstracted and almost whimsical father – Kudrow’s Liddy is not a million miles from Phoebe in Friends, which isn’t a bad thing.
Er… that’s it, except to mention that Parker Posey is also in it, as the weirdo who opens up the house for all concerned, and neglects to tell everyone that the Wi-Fi password – in Latin! – is the incantation that will summon the beast.
And, a late arrival, Vivian Bang as Josh and Rohan’s friend Sara, who is a big mouth and a vibrant presence even though there’s nothing for Bang to do and she’s mostly left flapping in the breeze.
Mix this lot together, remove the clothes from Brian Cox at one point (his body double, in fact), throw in spooky stuff and sexual jokes about the boundaries that exist between parents and their children, no matter what age – an erect penis, a mother caught mid-pee in the bathroom – and that’s about it from about 20 minutes in to the finish line.
It’s jolly and jaunty and not too rude, not particularly funny, never really that scary either. It’s a good-natured sort of thing that leaves plausibility behind early on and never returns to it, except in the portrayal of the parents’ relationships – both Cox and Falco and Kudrow and Norris seem like couples who have been married to each other for a long time. And in the initial awkwardness between all the parties, who don’t really get on until they are forced into bonding by events beyond their control.
Really it’s just like those old Bob Hope/Paulette Goddard movies The Cat and the Canary, or The Ghost Breakers, which had a better understanding that energy is the thing required to keep something like this moving. There are just a few too many scenes featuring Josh and Rohan reaffirming their love for each other, as if to remind us that Flynn and Dodani are still in the picture.
Cox does comedy. It’s funny, and he is the butt (literally) of much of the physical humour and attacks it vigorously. He even gets a few ranting and raging sequences when Frank is possessed by the demon spirit – much homophobic bile is spewed (Logan Roy? Just a bit). And if you’ve wanted to hear Cox singing a song from the Motown back catalogue, your day has also come.
If there is a message it’s that first world people could probably do with a bit of grit in their lives. Or that Cox can do comedy, or that Parker Posey is back – she earns her corn late on – and if you’re after something that’s got 1990s comedy DNA and isn’t too much of a strain, something you might watch with the olds, in fact, The Parenting might do it for you. Strange title, though, eh?
The Parenting – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
