Directed by Song Hae-Sung, the South Korean film Boomerang Family follows a dysfunctional family forced to live in close quarters once again, this time as adults. In the beginning of the film we are introduced to a failed 40 year old director, In-mo (Park Hae-II), who has given up on life and decides to move back in with his mother who wasn’t the best when it came to parenting. Upon arrival, he discovers that his older freeloading brother Han-mo (Yoon Je-Moon) has already moved back in after a stint in prison. Shortly after, their younger sister Mi-yun (Kong Hyo-jin), who is twice divorced, moves in with her spoiled 15 year old daughter Min-Kyung (Jin Ji-hee) and the madness of loud-mouthed adult siblings living together with their mother ensues.
Boomerang Family is a dysfunctional family dramedy in the same vein as Silver Linings Playbook, both take somewhat comical approaches to the dysfunctional family genre while infusing a lot of tense anger and conflict to keep the story moving along. The difference between the two is that Boomerang Family drops a few bombs just past the halfway point of the film which leads to an increase in tension amongst the family members and possibly even tragedy. In that regard, it’s actually less predictable than Silver Linings is while not feeling too convoluted from all the various storylines and, as it happens, would be a story ripe for an American remake, especially under a strong directorial hand.
There is a lot of arguing and fighting throughout the film, as you can imagine, and it never seems to let up regardless of what happens. On the one-hand that’s a great thing because it shows that no matter what happens, people don’t change overnight and, on the other hand, it’s annoying because you wish they’d just stop getting on each others’ cases already. Thankfully much of the bickering that happens in the first half is pretty humorous, I mean who doesn’t get a kick out of watching adult men arguing and wrestling like teenage boys. In the second half, the bickering turns to arguing as everyone’s patience begins to wear thin and soon previously unknown bits of information are revealed out of anger, completely disrupting the order of the house and everything the family has come to know throughout their lives. I didn’t see these twists coming and thought it was a brilliant way to shift gears from comedic to dramatic while finding a way to re-engage an audience that might have started to grow tired with the same dysfunctional family schtick.
On the whole I thought the film was well done but I did have one problem with it, namely that the ending doesn’t clear up the situation with Han-mo. There is a point in the final half hour or so where Han-mo makes a drastic decision which leads to an unfortunate run-in with his gangster employer. Without spoiling it, all I can say is that it isn’t clear how a visual in one scene leads to a visual in a later scene, minutes before the credits role.
Boomerang Family was certainly not the film I was expecting it to be. For one, it starts off rather dark, moves into lighter territory and then slowly moves towards the darkness for the remainder of the film, an approach that I really liked and felt drawn too. It was a nice change of pace from your standard dysfunctional family comedies and its dramatic portions found a way to distinguish itself from critically acclaimed titles in the same genre like August: Osage County and Silver Linings Playbook. I certainly enjoyed Boomerang Family and I think fans of Korean cinema will find it to be a solid and well-balanced entry into the genre that manages to exceed expectations.
Rating: A quality dysfunctional family dramedy that has it all: laughs, fights, and wildly unexpected plot twists (6.9/10)
Boomerang Family is now available on DVD in the UK from Third Window Films
Special features include: Interview with cast & crew, Making of, Q&A at LKFF, Theatrical Trailer
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