King of the Corner

This movie isn’t so much bad as it is painfully awful. Deeply reminiscent of the excruciating The Thing About My Folks, this is yet another story of a middle-aged man who must cope with his father’s aging. Peter Riegert, who I think was a star in 1983, “wrote” this movie, though if this is writing, then “writing” is the equivalent of letting a tape recorder run while insufferably boring suburbanites spend an evening talking about nothing, and then transcribing the results. The whole thing is so banal that it’s hard to imagine what Riegert was thinking, except maybe, “God, I wish I still had a career of some kind.” The wan attempts at humor are muted, which is a refreshing change of pace from the poop jokes that now pass as high-brow satire, but nonetheless, they leave out an essential element of comedy: They’re not funny.