Parenthood sees so clearly and honestly into the lives of no less than four generations of a sprawling family that each have their own various anxieties about life. The script, without ever managing to be messy or overly ambitious, deftly navigates their issues and gives each character the weight and attention they deserve. From here, Howard allows for the story lines to overlap and influence each other so that we can see exactly how the issues of parenthood differ from generation to generation. One core theme is the struggle between chasing your dreams and settling for a boring, monotonous office job that will pay the bills. Frank sees the two sides in his sons, and we see the effects of him babying and favouring one and being hard on another. Larry (the baby-faced Tom Hulce) has returned with yet another of his get rich quick schemes, and though he wears the persona of a hard, self-made man, the softer father in Frank cannot resist given him one more chance (as he has already done so many times in the past). But the film is also clever enough to not draw him as a complete pushover. When Larry once again proposes to skip town for a couple of months, we realise that he was never truly in mortal danger. And perhaps Frank knows this too, despite his everlasting affection for a son who has never held a stable job. This is why his character is wise enough to not to offer the money up front but set up an instalment plan, even as he knows what answer is coming. The film speaks so truly because it builds the lives of these parents and children and then looks for the comedy within, instead of the other way around. When Helen discovers sexually explicit photos of her daughter with the unapproved boyfriend, she is ready to explode, but does not do so overtly. She goes through a series of processes - first sarcasm, with a bit of underhand humour, as if she is almost trying to will the tricky situation away. Then she projects her emotions onto her son ("You've upset your brother!") which easily betrays her fears of her already disjointed family falling further into disarray. This elicits a laugh because Garry is in that particular phase where one-word deadpan answers are the norm and he doesn't show even the slightest bit of concern. Then finally Helen levels with the hyperbolic threats of no return that many parents will utter at some time or another, but nearly never mean it. Weist makes this hilarious because no more than a split second later she is spilling out and regretting her outburst and embarrassingly revealing her concern for all the neighbours to hear. This is very funny, but also very true, and the film combines the two flawlessly. And the transitions are timed well - this scenes is followed almost immediately by a teary Julie who has broken it off with Tod, and when Karen decides to try out an idea of Susan's, the cut to the aftermath is telling. Gil Buckman is the one most under fire. He is caught in that relentless dad trap between the job and his kids, and is fully aware. Refreshingly, he is not the usual bumbling father that the poster would suggest. The film's great strength is that it does not throw these tensions between work and family as if they were merely contrived scenes from a screenplay designed to bring about an effect. Gil knows the potential stigmas associated with Kevin, is firmly against mimicking his own distant father, and puts in real, visible effort to form a bond and protect his son. The narrative does not yank his agency from the floor under him and create wacky, zany antics from improbably situations. So this builds the penultimate moment. Gil fumes and fumes and fumes on the unlucky timing of Karen's pregnancy and how it will throw the already precarious balance between his work and home into further chaos. And then he finally realises that if he can experience that brief spark of laughter and joy after a pop-up catch just once more, he would gladly go through another roller-coaster ride.

Gil Buckman (Steve Martin) tries to be a better father than his own unavailable father. It's the funny story of the extended Buckman family from Ron Howard. Mary Steenburgen plays his wife. Dianne Wiest plays his single-mother sister. Rick Moranis and Harley Jane Kozak play the uptight parents. Tom Hulce is the black sheep of the family. The great list of actors include Joaquin Phoenix, Keanu Reeves, Jason Robards, and Martha Plimpton.This is just a fun and insightful look at big family dynamics. It's got both pathos and comedy. This is possibly Ron Howard at his best. It would be easy to drive this multi character storyline chaos into an unmitigated mess. All the different characters could have been reduced to stereotypes. Instead these characters feel like they truly fit in a family. This is a great feel good movie.

Parenthood is one of my favourite films and it's an eighties classic as far as I am concerned. It's Steve Martin's greatest hour and a fantastic ensemble film. Set around an extended family's goings on; four siblings' families go through divorce, separation, genius children issues, dysfunctional children, teen pregnancy and seemingly inappropriate relationships, adolescence gone awry, loneliness and sexual frustration, senile dementia, unemployment and gambling addiction. A funny, touching and inspirational film with quite a few iconic truisms. It is gentle comedy, but laugh out loud in places, and has something for everyone. Much imitated but never truly reproduced, it's just wonderfully uplifting and heart-warming with some great performances especially by Joaquin (then Leaf) Phoenix and Dianne Wiest.It hasn't aged well, particularly, but it's still relevant, engaging and eminently watchable. Love it.

because beneath the humor of the truly brilliant script, layer upon layer of a highly philosophical take on the post-68 family structure unfold (which is subtly hinted at in Helen's "I was at Woodstock, for gosh sake!") and almost every line serves as the headline of some deeply-rooted problem in modern co-existence. Without feeling force-fed or lectured, we are presented with every conceivable angle of dysfunctional family life, from Robards' negligent father figure to the neurotically duty-obsessed Steve Martin ("My whole life is 'have to'!"). It is one of those gems that tend to get truer, the more you watch it. The acting is flawless all the way through, but in the final analysis, the true genius of the film lies in the script. And then it's so wonderfully unassuming! It strikes me as being one of those films like "The Apartment," which seem like comedies the first time you see them, but veer still more towards tragedy with each time they're revisited. I forget the name of the space capsule that contained a message to whichever aliens we wanted to inform about human life on the planet Earth, but in any case: "Parenthood" is the film I would put on board. I can't think of any film more suited to giving an impression of 20th century humans.