My Father The Hero: A Pedophile’s Delight

This one is on you, Touchstone. My Father The Hero, Touchstone (1994).

By R. J. F.

This article originally appeared on Medium.com (3/17/2022).

In the early to mid 90s, there were a slew of terrible films that were released and designated as children’s movies. I think this is why I have a sickness where I watch terrible movies that are mildly entertaining, yet totally stupid, and a complete waste of a viewing experience. Some of these movies were totally meant for kids, such as Beethoven, and its awful sequel, but some of them were questionable, at best. My Father The Hero is a movie I can remember my mom taking me to watch in the theater. I don’t know if my mom knew what the movie was about, and I have a suspicion she only took me to go see it because of the title, and the fact that it was marketed towards pre-teens, but children’s movie, you are not, My Father The Hero! I was about 12 when the movie was released, and when I watched it as a kid, I found it to be slightly interesting and also creepy.

Looking back at the film, the premise is totally gross. The movie is about a father, Andre, who lives in France, played by the quintessential American representation of a French man, Gerard Depardieu, taking his teenage daughter on a Bahamian vacation. His daughter, Nicole, lives in New York with her mom, and Andre is trying to reconnect with Nicole by sparing no expense on this tropical getaway. Nicole, played by Katherine Heigl, is a precocious and angsty girl of 14. For a majority of the movie, she’s really terrible to her dad because of how angry she is with him. On this vacation, she becomes smitten with a guy, Ben, who works at the resort and decides to make herself seem older to him. The guy she’s interested in is supposed to be around 20 years old. How does she make herself seem older to Ben? By telling him that she is a teenage escort and is there with her lover, aka, her dad. Queue the retching sounds of ickdom.

This movie is problematic in many ways. First, and at the forefront, is the entire premise. Who the fuck greenlit this script?! Like, seriously. The minor characters in the movie find out that Nicole is an escort and instead of, oh, I don’t know, calling the authorities, they begin to shun Andre, act passive aggressively towards him, and make snide remarks. Some of them even comment that Andre is French, and, apparently, that’s a semi-acceptable excuse for this relationship. All of these backhanded comments and angry glares are confusing to Andre because he doesn’t know that his daughter has created this lie. To top it off, Nicole confesses to her dad that she is interested in Ben, but instead of protecting his young daughter from this unsuitable suitor, he encourages her to profess her love to him. WTF kind of parenting is that?

Now, you might be thinking that eventually Nicole and Andre come clean and let everyone know that it was just a disgusting ruse, but they don’t, which leads me to problem number two. Eventually, Nicole tells her dad about the lie that she created, and suddenly all the hate Andre has been experiencing from the other characters makes sense to him. If I were in Andre’s shoes, I would make my daughter let Ben and everyone else know that she is NOT, in fact, my child escort. This doesn’t happen. Instead, Andre starts to play along with the act. Um, again, what kind of parent is this? Andre thinks it’s funny that he and Nicole are duping all of these adults into thinking that he’s porking a teenager. They leave the resort on their last day without anyone knowing the truth, and yet, Andre still hasn’t been arrested this whole time. Bro, what the hell?

Now, all I can think of looking back is, oh god, what was my mom thinking about when she took me to see this? I imagine when she and my dad were getting ready for bed that night after we had seen the movie, and I was out of earshot, she explained to him what she took me to see. I’m sure she probably thought it would be a fun and entertaining mother/daughter activity to do on a weekend afternoon, and not an outing that consisted of watching a film that was complicit in, and provided a wink and a nod to child exploitation. My Father The Hero is definitely not something that a child should have seen, or should still see, and apparently, I’m still traumatized by it because I’m writing an entire review almost 30 years after its release. Thanks a lot, Mom!