top of page

Review: "The Guide to the Perfect Family"

  • Writer: Jennifer Green
    Jennifer Green
  • Jul 14, 2021
  • 2 min read

Updated: Sep 17, 2021

Billed as a "dramedy," this French Canadian film sometimes struggles to balance its tone between comedy and drama, but while the humor lightens the mood, its more serious scenes and ideas give it life.


Some of the comedy in The Guide to the Perfect Family hits its mark, most involving overprotective helicopter parents and their entitled results. A mom can barely balance the body of her large 5-year-old on her lap while breastfeeding him; parents demand specialized individual treatment from a teacher; a dad ends a conflictive card-guessing game alone with a card of Hitler on his head, unbeknownst to him; a pumpkin spice-chugging millennial employee finds actually working at his job too emotionally taxing.

The fact that many of these gags are so goofy do work to lighten the overall mood of the film and make it more approachable, but in doing so they also threaten to undermine the very serious message it aims to convey.

That message is embodied in the father-daughter pair played exceptionally well by Louis Morissette and Emilie Bierre. A couple of scenes involving just the two of them are the film's highlights, one where they fight over what music to listen to on a car ride and another where their resentment and anger floats to the surface during an outing on a lake. We see the world through both of their eyes, as well as through their social media worlds, and it's possible viewers will sympathize with one or the other depending on their own station in life.


Another dialogue involving a grandfather comparing his parenting style with his two grown sons, both also now fathers, brings in a third generation's view. What's more important than whether any one generation is actually right about the best way to parent is how they find common ground and see each other's perspective that counts.

That's a lesson parents and teens alike can take away.

Read the full review at Common Sense Media.

Comments


 

A note about privacy: This web is hosted on the Wix.com platform. Wix.com provides us with the online platform that allows us to share our content you. We do not share personal information with third-parties nor do we store information we collect about your visit to this blog for use other than to analyze content performance through the use of cookies, which you can turn off at any time by modifying your Internet browser's settings. We are not responsible for the republishing of the content found on this blog on other web sites or media without our permission. All art and posters from films used on this site are sourced from distributors where possible, and always represent official art released for press coverage of films. Other images are original. Please contact me directly with questions. This privacy policy is subject to change without notice.

bottom of page