Screwed Up
A child goes through various stages of growing up but for Carter (Adam Scott) there was the period where he had to listen to his parents row. That was followed by dealing with the lawyers when they got divorced and they were fighting over custody of him and his brother Trey (Clark Duke). But that was followed by dealing with both of his parents ending up having new relationships, new marriages and moving on. It is little surprise that Carter couldn't wait to grow up and escape his family's chaos which is exactly what he managed to achieve. That is until his little brother declares he is getting married and not only does that cause conversations between Carter and his girlfriend Lauren (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) but he also has to deal with getting his parents to come to the wedding. And so the chaos and arguing starts all over again.
Director Stuart Zicherman also co-wrote "A.C.O.D." and evidently this is a semi-autobiographical movie which draws on his own personal experiences of being an adult child of divorce. To be honest I could have guessed that "A.C.O.D." was based on someone's experiences of being a child of divorce as it has that cathartic nature of someone using their memories and pent-up frustrations as not just material for various jokes but also as a base for coming up with some worse nightmare style scenarios. And there are some amusing scenes in "A.C.O.D." as we watch Carter deal with chaos re-entering his life because of his mum and dad as well as the woman he thought was his therapist when he was a child.
The trouble is that "A.C.O.D." is one of those comedies which fails to be consistently funny with many of the gags ending up either too obvious or hit n miss. It also ends up one of these movies where out of nowhere it can suddenly go off on a tangent with a scene or gag which ends up feeling a little like filler. The thing is that after a while it starts to lose your attention because not only the randomness of some of the humour but because the characters give this an almost whiney nature as they talk at each other rather than to each other.
What this all boils down to is that I reckon those who enjoy watching and listen to Adam Scott firing off self obsessed dialogue might enjoy "A.C.O.D.". But for those who like their comedy more varied and not so much about people talking at each other might find this only fun in parts.
