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YMMV / That's My Boy

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  • Audience-Alienating Premise: Incest, statutory rape, pedophilia, parental neglect and abuse all rolled into one. The fact that it's a comedy makes it even worse. The film's depicting these subjects for laughs all caused it to be panned by critics and it became a Box Office Bomb.
  • Awesome Music: Rush, Def Leppard, KISS, Van Halen, and other classic 70's/80's rock. It's like Happy Madison used Star-Lord's Mix Tapes for the soundtrack.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Fridge Brilliance: Chad threatens to use his "government-issued revolver" on Todd early in the film. At first, it seems like an error by the filmmakers, as the US Military hasn't issued revolvers in almost a century. Then you find out that Chad was only pretending to be a Marine.
  • Fridge Horror: Chad refers to his sexual encounters with his older sister Jamie as "secret tickle time". While that sounds like a silly euphemism at first, it also sounds like the term a child molester would use to describe that activity to their victim, with emphasis on the 'secret' part. It all implies that Jamie manipulated and sexually abused her younger brother for years.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Leighton Meester portrays an apparently quirky but actually a complete jerkoff of a bride-to-be that cheats on her husband-to-be with her brother and in the series finale of her show, Gossip Girl, a half-brother and sister (they share a brother) get married.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Ms. McGarricle willingly starting a sexual relationship with a minor. Even though Donny was a willing participant, he had neither the mental or emotional maturity to fully process and handle what was going on and could have done irreparable long term damage to his psyche.
    • Jamie crosses it by cheating on her fiancee with her younger brother.
  • Questionable Casting: James Caan and Susan Sarandon, most especially. Andy Samberg also counts, as he was cast to play a fairly generic Only Sane Man despite being famous for playing over the top characters so well.
  • Squick: Chances are, something in this movie will make you want to throw up or take a shower. Or throw up while taking a shower.
    • A drunk Todd having sex with a mannequin thinking it was his fiancee. And getting vomit and ejaculation on her wedding dress. And her recognizing what the latter was simply by taking a small taste.
    • The whole relationship between Jamie and Chad. Especially the hotel scene.
    • A pedophile 22-year-old teacher statutory seducing her 12-year-old student.
    • A boy becoming a father at 12-years-old.
  • Strawman Has a Point: The Judge who sentences Donny's teacher to jail for statutory rape is portrayed like a frumpy killjoy for Donny, rather than the only sane and morally upright person in the courtroom she really is.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Some might argue that the premise would've worked better if it hadn't been a comedy and instead been done as much more serious film that didn't take these subjects lightly.
  • Vindicated by History: The negative reception of the film has cooled down over the years and nowadays, there's no shortage of people on social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube that admit to liking the movie and finding it funny.
  • The Woobie: Todd. He grew up neglected by his father. He only knew his mother by visiting her in prison. He's a diabetic due to his father's neglectful parenting. His fiancĂ©e is cheating on him with many people including her younger brother and only marrying him because of his money, and his dad only shows up just to ask him for money to pay for the IRS instead of actually spending quality time with him (to be fair, Donny ultimately moves past this goal to genuinely bond with his son in the end).

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