Critic Reviews

What makes I Love You, Daddy at times frustrating but ultimately enthralling is that the whole picture feels like an exploration — and one where not even C.K. knew where he was going when he started shooting.

I Love You, Daddy is a hilarious, awkward and boundary-pushing comedy about fatherhood, anxiety and the ethics of relationships.

It contrives to be a very funny and recklessly provocative homage to Woody Allen, channelling his masterpiece Manhattan and brilliantly finding a fictional way to tackle his personal reputation head-on.

As a whole, I Love You, Daddy belongs to C.K.’s own peculiar aesthetic, in that it’s brilliantly calibrated to captivate viewers and make them recoil at the same time.

Both in the writing and performance, China is a finely wrought creation, a young lady of manners and a degree of taste but who has been given no guidance, rules, motivation or a stern hand.

Its refusal to over-simplify gives it the structure of a rough cut. Being a grown-up, as far as I Love You, Daddy is concerned, means picking your failures and frustrations; it picks to be too long and poky.

There’s a better, tighter, more emotionally focused movie hidden somewhere in the sprawl of “I Love You, Daddy.” It’s a movie that’s just as rude, funny, and observant as this one but that doesn’t tie itself in knots trying to “say” something.

It’s a film in which provocations are punchlines and treading into potentially offensive territory is an end in and of itself. It consistently pushes every boundary it comes across, and then just sort of stands there and shrugs about it.