John Tremont is a busy executive. He learns during a meeting that his mother has suffered a heart attack and been rushed to the hospital. Flying immediately to Los Angeles, he ends up becoming a caretaker of his father Jake while Bette Tremont is recovering. A retired aerospace industry worker, Jake has become somewhat feeble and totally reliant on his wife, so John attempts to get him more involved in day-to-day things like taking care of the house. Father and son bond. John invites his dad to a business meeting and takes him out for a Bingo game. They play catch with a baseball in the yard. Late one night, college-aged grandson Billy turns up as well. John begins to appreciate while spending quality time with his dad that he has been neglecting his own son. Bette returns home from the hospital. She is a strong, willful woman with little personal warmth. Jake is happy to have everyone around him again during family dinners with the kids, including daughter Annie and son-in-law Mario, but the glum Bette resents the intrusion. One day, Jake discovers blood in his urine and is taken to a doctor. John has a single request at the hospital — to avoid the word "cancer," which terrifies his dad. An arrogant doctor named Santana who feels he knows what is best decides that a patient has a right to know tells Jake. Jake immediately loses his bearings and ends up in a coma. A fiercely protective John stays by his father's side constantly and a more sympathetic doctor named Chad volunteers his help. Jake unexpectedly wakes up one day and seems perfectly fine. Upon coming home, Jake acts reborn and reinvigorated. He confuses his wife by dressing in an odd manner, studying new languages, visiting the neighbors and even wanting sex at night. John feels his dad is just trying to enjoy life, something his bitter mother seems incapable of doing. Something more is definitely wrong with Jake, however. He is having delusions about being the head of a different family on a far-away farm. A psychiatrist concludes that Jake sought joy in a fantasy world while being unable to experience a sufficient amount in his own. Jake has a relapse. In the hospital, he reminisces with his son about things that made him happiest, like work and baseball, before passing away. John, a better man for the experience, returns to his old life.
Cast
Jack Lemmon as Jake Tremont
* Lemmon's son Chris played Young Jake in flashbacks
Dad currently holds a 60% rating on website Rotten Tomatoes, indicating largely mixed reviews by critics. Hal Hinson of the Washington Post wrote, "Dad is a melodramatic plumbing of the relationship between two generations of fathers and sons, and it runs through nearly the entire gamut of emotionally loaded issues, from infirmity and senility to reconciliation and death."
