Cheap Invisible Dad (Video) (Fred Olen Ray) Price

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Customer Reviews of Invisible Dad

Features: A plot that wobbles between ludicrous and nonexistent. Actors who learned their craft during an elementary-school production of "Mister Molar Meets the Tooth Decay Bandits." Props purchased from Goodwill on half-price Saturday. And a budget apparently smaller than Ben Affleck's dental-floss bill. It all adds up to a movie whose quality has reached rock bottom and started to dig. If there's a child in your household between five and eight years old, however... hey, it's a lot more entertaining than watching Thomas the Tank Engine for the 10,800th time!

As noted, describing the plot is superfluous, but for the sake of completeness: Dad Andrew (Daran Norris) and 12-year-old son Doug (William Meyers III) move into house formerly occupied by crazy inventor, who's left behind a gadget. Doug, playing with gadget, accidentally turns dad (surprise!) invisible, after a few preceding misadventures, including summoning a "Baywatch" bimbo (Shayna Ryan) to his bedroom (not as naughty as it sounds; she thinks Doug and his friend are aliens.) Naturally, Doug breaks the machine right after Dad's mishap. Meanwhile, Dad's in the middle of a big architectural contract and a budding romance with Doug's teacher (Mary Elizabeth McGlinn), set up by Doug), so the invisibility thing is a tad inconvenient. The plot features a number of physical-comedy moments, none convincing in the least, but all hugely appreciated by our 7-y.o. critic. Doug's desperate to get his dad back in the pink, but all his efforts (including an utterly unbelievable shoplifting/jailbreak sequence) flop - until crazy inventor's long-lost twin brother happens to fly in from South Africa to save the day. There are a couple of side-plots involving bad guys stealing Dad's architectural plans and a wacko neighbor (Charles Dierkop) who thinks space aliens are taking over. (He may have a point -- the actors are pretty Stepford-ish.) Of course everything turns out okay in the end. Even the neighbor gets his just desserts at the hands of his long-suffering wife (Vicki Skinner), who has probably the funniest lines in the movie.

Kids will enjoy the plot's premise (what 12-y.o. boy has NOT daydreamed about turning Dad invisible, at least when it's time to take out the trash?) Adults can laugh themselves silly at the many unintentional howlers, such as the invisibility gadget (a vegetable steamer on an old record-player turntable - I am not making this up), or the low-budget location sets, which consist of two, count 'em, two building exteriors (I'm still wondering how both Dad's architectural office and the library can continue to be in the building that gets blown up halfway through.)

All in all, it's as bad as they come, and that's okay. Incidentally, we watched "Independence Day" the same evening as "Invisible Dad", and I'm hard-pressed to say which is more ridiculous. At least "Invisible Dad" doesn't pretend to be serious cinema.