With a run time of just shy of 2 hours, Addy Daddy shines in the first hour. Lexi Simonsen gives a beautiful, heartbreaking, and all too real performance as Addison. Lucas and Addison’s relationship is relatable and beautifully depicts the romance of getting to know someone. We can all relate to not fitting in and the joy of finding someone who not only gets you and your flaws but accepts and loves you for them.
While watching this film, there is a Christmas Carol effect where you want to bang on the window of this couple’s apartment and tell them how to fix the relationship. You want them to work out. Addy Daddy effectively illustrates the anxiety and restlessness of college/post-grad life where you want the rest of your life to start already but don’t know how to or where to begin and how to let go of the things holding you back from taking that first step in any direction.
“Lexi Simonsen gives a beautiful, heartbreaking, and all too real performance…”
The second hour of the film is where the story struggles. The parallel universe idea is planted during one of Lucas’ college lectures, but the story struggles to really execute that idea in a clear and entertaining way. The story resets and plays through the same story beats all over again with slight variations, signaling Lucas’ desire to make things right, but that doesn’t need to be an hour and doesn’t need to occur after an hour invested in the film already.
Shaving a half hour of the film would have benefitted the story immensely. The ambiguity is clearly a choice by the filmmaker, but Lucas’ amnesia combined with alternate universes confuses the idea that he is indeed in another timeline. The film tries to do too much, gets a little too heady, and loses the heart established in the film’s first hour.
Addy Daddy succeeds in doing something new with the rom-com genre, which is worth the admission price. It’s not perfect, and there are some things I wish were different, but that only drives home the film’s theme even more. Just like the relationship between Lucas and Addy, we are left wondering what could have been. This makes for an entertaining film and a soft recommendation.
Addy Daddy screened at the 2024 Dances With Films.
"…...beautifully depicts the romance of getting to know someone"
