NOTHING IN COMMON

title: NOTHING IN COMMON
year: 1988
cast: Tom Hanks, Jackie Gleason, Eva Marie Saint, Hector Elizondo
rating: **

With a title like NOTHING IN COMMON, and the casting of Tom Hanks as the son of Jackie Gleason, you'll expect a different, and a lot better, film than this. Instead of centering on a mismatched relationship between father and son, sharing equally with both talents, it's all about Hank's charming flake, seeming more like a Burt Reynolds character from the seventies: he gets all the women, all the time. Meanwhile, his salesman dad and put-upon mother (Eva Marie Saint) are newly divorced, and dad loses his job. It's at the very end - after centering too much on Tom's tomfoolery around an advertising firm... all seeming like a pointless Romantic Comedy without enough of either - that, after pop falls ill, father and son bond. Then it's done, and we're left with either a really misleading film, or title, or both.