Father of seven siblings has left home for twenty years. Growing up 20 years without the presence of father, the siblings not hate him but really desire a visit from him. As they grown-up, the seven adult siblings of the Fitzgerald family make a plan to brings their father back on the Christmas occasion.
Burns remains an agreeable presence throughout, and the emotions mostly ring true, even if the comic elements feel overly broad and individual episodes are hit-and-miss.
Burns gives a rare picture of another borough, showing the working-class environment he grew up in, and eulogizes: Queens, and even the beaches of Long Island when not in high season.
A fertile battlefield of sibling discontent and parental resentment, creating a prickly but inviting familial atmosphere that offers enough variation in woe to ease the script out of its occasional dalliance with clumsy melodrama.
Manages the considerable feat of interweaving the personal dramas of nine members of a boisterous Irish-American clan into a coherent mosaic with a streamlined narrative drive.
Paste Magazine
December 07, 2012
Burns' latest demonstrates the workmanlike skill with which he's produced a new relationship drama every one or two years.