A very funny comedy. It’s a very funny comedy that almost made me cry.

With Dad and his last writer-director effort, "Sleeping Dogs Lie," Goldthwait has accomplished the formidable feat of making wry, tender, fundamentally sweet comedies about the human condition that just happen to center on acts of autoerotic asphyxiation and bestiality, respectively. That isn't easy.

The particular stew of midlife and pubescent despair that clogs a single-father male-child household has rarely been achieved so well.

With a merciless acuity this nihilistic comedy ridicules collective grief and the news media's cynical marketing of inspirational uplift after a death.

The picture wobbles a bit before emerging a successful low-key satire of literary fraud and morbid personality cults.