Fathers' Day

Fathers' Day is a comedy about two very different men who learn they may each be the father of the same teenage boy. Jack Lawrence is a successful lawyer with a comfortable life in Los Angeles, while Dale Putley is a nervous, struggling writer in San Francisco. Their former girlfriend Collette re-enters both of their lives and tells each of them, separately, that he is the father of her son. When the seventeen-year-old runs away from home, she persuades both men to go looking for him. Jack and Dale meet by chance, discover they are chasing the same boy, and are forced to work together despite their differences.

Ivan Reitman directed the film, the tenth of the fifteen features he made, between Junior and Six Days Seven Nights. Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel wrote the screenplay, and Joel Silver produced alongside Reitman. Robin Williams and Billy Crystal star as Dale and Jack, with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Nastassja Kinski, Charlie Hofheimer and Bruce Greenwood in supporting roles. The production had a budget of 85 million dollars and took about 36 million dollars worldwide, a poor return on its cost. On IMDb it holds a rating of 4.2 out of 10 from 61 reviews, while audiences on TMDB give it 5.5 out of 10 from 318 votes, so the critical and viewer scores sit close together.