Who’s Yer Father? Review | Long, Island Comedy

Occasionally funny, but assuredly overlong and more convoluted than it needs to be, the East Coast Canadian comedy Who’s Yer Father? breezes along on the same wave of cultural stereotypes and often good natured ribbing that one expects from a homegrown genre film. When it comes to jokes, writer-director Jeremy Larter’s comedic caper film takes the easy road, but when it comes to weaving an Elmore Leonard-esque story of colourful misfits caught up in a messy criminal scenario that only gets worse, Who’s Yer Father? sometimes loses the plot.

Prince Edward Island based Private Investigator Larry Constable (Chris Locke) – the only PI on PEI – is a divorced, bumbling sad-sack who spends most of his days tracking down lost family heirlooms and golfing with his perma-drunk buddy (Marc Hickox) rather than working real cases. That all changes when an irate, arrogant, and wealthy client (Matt Wells) hires Larry and sends him to the coastal community of Sandbar Cove to investigate a black market lobster dealer that’s cutting into his profits. While there, Larry becomes smitten with Rhonda (Susan Kent), a convenience store owner who’s big into the power of manifestation and is looking to buy a soft serve machine that could really boost her local business. When Larry uncovers shady romantic and financial dealing’s between his client’s perpetually horny wife (Kaniehtiio Horn) and the nymphomaniac fisherman (Steve Lund) he’s been assigned to investigate, Rhonda pushes straight-laced Larry into a potential blackmail scheme that could net them some extra dough.

Who’s Yer Father? – which takes its name from both a common East Coaster greeting and the name of Larry’s PI agency – never quite finds a balance between its darker, edgier plot elements and good natured, softball jokes about small town islanders. Surprisingly, it’s the less ambitious elements that work better in Who’s Yer Father?, with simple tossed off lines of dialogue (“I’m just gettin’ my good chowdah dish and blastin’.”) getting bigger laughs than some of the more elaborate set pieces and running gags. Quite often, Larter finds himself running jokes needlessly into the ground, and far past the point of being funny (if they were even all that funny to begin with). But just as the film seems to go through lulls where most of the jokes aren’t hitting the mark, there will be a shot of comedic ingenuity to cut through the monotony, with most of the credit going to Locke and Kent, who make a winning comedic tandem.

Clocking in at nearly two hours in length, Who’s Yer Father? drags a plot full of too many predictable swerves and pitfalls to an eventual breaking point, with the muddled comedic contrivances running out of steam and energy before petering out to almost nothing by the end. Boasting too many uninteresting subplots, stock characters, and a mystery that isn’t actually a mystery, Who’s Yer Father? is a stream of reliable, old standard PEI jokes in search of a stronger story. But the scenery and cast are both nice, and on the whole it has a rather pleasant disposition, like most Canadian comedies about townies tend to possess. If the story had been as simple as the gags or if the plot had leaned a bit more into some of its darker corners, Who’s Yer Father? would have a lot more to offer. Still good for a few chuckles, though.

Who’s Yer Father? opens in select Canadian cinemas on Friday, November 3, 2023. Select members of the cast and crew will be doing Q&As at select east coast theatres, with stops in Charlottetown, PEI (Nov. 3, 6:30, Cineplex), Moncton, NB (Nov. 4, 6:30, Cineplex), Saint John, NB (Nov 5, 6:50, Cineplex), and Halifax, NS (Nov. 6, 6:45, Scotiabank Theatre).