We get no insight or flashback scene showing the experience the daughters had nor even the Tom Hulce character had having to grow up with that tyrannical father like we do the Steve Martin character. Even though the film seems to concentrate on Martin/Steenbergen's family the Robards character is too engrossing and leaves one wanting an explanation.
sharePARENTHOOD 2 : THE LOST TAPES.
shareI think we got all the insight required for the story the film told. I'm not sure if that's down to the recognisable tropes, good writing, skills of the cast or perhaps the casting process. Probably a mix of all these and more.
sharethese are the days where people get to rewrite everything in their head, usually involved pointless things they wish they could see in movies that would make them impossibly long to watch like 9 or 27 hours long each.
shareAgreed. I've never wanted or needed a backstory.
shareI would say that Helen and Susan weren't as scarred by their father's parenting style as their brothers were.
They happened to be girls and had their apparently far more competent mother as a role model.
And thus, they felt no need to reject what he did wrong like Gil or to live up to his high expectations like Larry.
It is really similar to how differently Helen's two kids reacted to their father being a lousy dead-beat.
Julie seemed to not care much, but it was painful to see how much Gary simply needed an older male to talk to.
It is clear in this story that fathers like Frank and Ed will hurt their sons more than they will hurt their daughters.
That said, it is revealed that Susan was "wild" before she met Nathan.
Could it have been her way of rebelling against her father and/or trying to deal with an unhappy childhood?
When it comes to Larry, we do get insight that he had tried to "leave his mark" as his father wanted him to do.
Alas, Larry was immature and irresponsible and couldn't do anything right.
But he still wanted to make his father proud and believed that becoming "boring" like Gil wouldn't cut it.
And that is when we can see that Frank managed to scar both his favorite son and his unfavorite son.
But it's revealed already in the first scene that Frank's own father had been awful and taught him nothing good.
Thus, we've got a good example of a generational trauma going on here.
Fortunately, Gil is prepared to be a cycle breaker and do his uttermost to be the best father ever.
Luckily, he is mostly successful at it too except for one scene when he's in a bad mood after he quit his job.
Frank is clearly also prepared to do things right this time around with Cool.
So we can just hope that Kevin, Justin and Cool will be more well-adjusted as grown-ups...