When I was searching for something light and funny to watch last night -- we'd had a couple hours where emotions had run high among various people in the family -- I didn't expect that thing I would fix on would end up also being a profound warning about taking fatherhood for granted.
In fact, I didn't land on Liar Liar on Amazon Prime until the second time going through my options. I have of course seen Liar Liar -- this might be my fourth viewing overall -- but that was by design. I knew the light and funny thing I would end up with would be something I had already seen, in order to guarantee myself the lightness and funniness I wanted, rather taking a risk with some unknown quantity.
At first I thought maybe it wasn't quite the right thing, for one reason that doesn't have much to do with anything and one that does. The random reason was that I had just rewatched another Jim Carrey film from this era, The Mask, earlier this year, and watching Liar Liar seemed like going to too similar a rewatch well.
The more salient reason was that over the years, I seem to have forgotten just how good Liar Liar is.
Not only have I not written about it on this blog, as I can see by the fact that I'm using the "liar liar" tag for the first time, but my records should that I haven't watched it in the "rewatch era" -- in other words, the era in which I started keeping track of my rewatches. That began in in 2006, so it's been more than 18 years since I've watched this movie, though I think I did watch it three times in its first ten years of existence -- if we are indeed calling this my fourth viewing overall.
It would have to be at least four, because there was so much I remembered about this movie -- lines of dialogue, inflections of Jim Carrey's voice, laugh-out-loud bits of physical comedy.
What I didn't remember is exactly how funny these things are -- and just how touching I find the movie's underlying sentiment.
In fact -- and it could just be because my own son had a tough emotional moment an hour or so earlier -- I almost found myself getting a little choked up.
Liar Liar is an exaggerated version of a very real problem, or at least potential problem, among fathers and their children. Mothers, unless they defy what the statistics tell us, are very unlikely to neglect their children. You are much more likely to find mothers that go to the extreme of suffocating their children with love and affection than those that fall down on the job even a little bit. Mothers are treasures and we should probably acknowledge them a lot more often than we do.
Fathers? Fathers can drop the ball without even trying ... often because they aren't trying.
Even good fathers, though, can slip into a sort of middling indifference toward their duties, knowing the mother will pick up the slack, knowing that everything will get done when it should get done because of the ingrained calendars most mothers have in their heads. That's certainly true of household duties and life admin, but can even be true of some of the basic ways children need to be nurtured.
In Liar Liar, I thought specifically about how Carrey's Fletcher Reede keeps putting off the game of catch with his son, the one where young Max is supposed to be Dodger pitcher Hideo Nomo and Fletcher is supposed to be Oakland A's star ... well, you know the line of dialogue: "I'm Jose Canseco! I'M JOSE CANSECO!"
Putting off playing with my kids is something I have been guilty of. Although I kick a soccer ball with my younger son in the backyard about once a week in good times -- we have a game where we switch who plays goalie in the net in the back yard, and the other one takes shots until he scores -- he'd probably like that to be more like two to three times a week. And as I sit here typing this, I feel like life has gotten in the way and it's been about three weeks since we've done this.
See that's the thing, for dads it is easy enough to say that life has gotten in the way. Or even just to give off that vibe, that you're too tired, that you're too busy, that you just can't do it right now. Give off that vibe enough, and you don't actually have to say no to your kids. They see the no in your face so they don't even bother asking.
And then one day, it's the last time you ever play soccer in the back yard with your son, and you don't even know it already happened until after the fact.
The time we have with our children is precious. In the moment, we find certain demands of that relationship onerous, and we think only about our short-term gratification in not having to do the thing they want to do, so we can lie down, so we can scroll through our phone -- even so we can do things that we legitimately have to do, like prepare dinner or put away laundry.
But the children are not going to be there forever. One day they will grow up and they won't want you or need you to do any of these things. Or, in a more extreme version, Cary Elwes will try to get them to move to Boston with your ex-wife Maura Tierney, leaving you in Los Angeles wondering where it all went wrong.
Even though my biggest takeaway from the movie was how much I laughed -- still laughed, all these years later, at brilliant physical comedy by Carrey that I have seen at least four times -- the takeaway about my relationship with my sons was almost as big. I think of that heartbreaking look on Carrey's face after the scene where he has tried to get Max to unwish his single-day truth curse so Carrey can try to win his case in court. When Fletcher explains that all adults lie, even the perfect Gary (Elwes), Max says "But you're the only one who makes me feel bad."
The look on Carrey's face that captures the shock of his recognition of the truth in Max's words ... it's one of those early moments from the actor where we must have recognized he was capable of more than mugging. And it really drove home, for me, that we rarely are so lucky to have a child spell out for us, in so many words, the ways we are failing them. In most cases, they never give it to us so bluntly, so we don't have the opportunity to mend our ways and make sure the relationship doesn't deteriorate by degrees until it no longer exists.
It's almost enough to make me go to my son's soccer game this morning ... almost.
You see, my wife has set it up so that I get a "break" on Father's Day, not having to go to the early soccer game so I can stay home and lounge in my pajamas. It's a nice gesture and I have to give her the gift of taking it, to make her feel like she is properly recognizing me on Father's Day.
But after seeing Liar Liar ... well I really want to go to that game.
Now, for context, I have only missed a few of his games this year. There have been a couple times when he's stayed over at his aunt's house for a sleepover, meaning she took him to his game the next morning. However, on one of those occasions, I actually did go to watch the game anyway, even though she brought him there. I am a good father -- pretty good, at least, I hope -- and so I've gone out of my way to see certain games, even when I didn't need to.
But the thing is, you never know when the game will be a watershed moment for them. About three or four weeks ago, my son had one of those games, where he scored not only his first goal of the season, but his second. Thankfully, I was there to see it.
If something like that happens today, well, I'll miss it.
But I think I can make up for it. I think I can play soccer with him later, after he gets home, even if he's a bit soccer'd out. I think I can also play some one-on-one basketball with my older son, even though he doesn't need me like he once did.
Last night, though, my older son did need me. He was feeling a little lost -- those were his words -- for reasons he couldn't put his finger on. He had given my wife a little attitude and then had snapped at her. For a moment we didn't know where he had gone, and then we realized he had been in the back yard, crying.
I was there to give him a long hug. (She was too, but I was the one who saw him first.) He's 14, so I don't get to hug him often. I made it count and I said the right things to make him feel better, at least a little bit.
I am a good father -- but I could always be better. And I won't have forever to prove it.
And sometimes, we get cinematic reminders of such things from the most unexpected placed.
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