Weekend Family Review: A Pleasant And Fun Product To Be Enjoyed With The Whole Family | Disney+ Series
Stars: Daphnée Côté-Hallé, Eric Judor, Annelise Hesme
Director: Sophie Reine and Pierre-François Martin-Laval
Streaming Platform: Disney+ (click to watch)
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3/5 (three star) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
Available from 9 March 2022 on the Disney+ platform, Weekend Family is the first French production television series to enter the Disney streaming channel catalog, created by Baptiste Filleul and directed by Sophie Reine and Pierre-François Martin-Laval. The show consists of 8 episodes of 30 minutes each.
Weekend Family Review: The Story
Fred (Eric Judor), a charming osteopath, has custody of his three daughters every weekend, from three different mothers: Clara (Liona Bordonaro), the eldest, politically committed teenager and secretly in love with her neighbor Romy (Roxane Barrazuol), an intelligent and witty girl but, if necessary, also very mischievous and, finally, Victoire (Midie Dreyfus), a sweet and full of interest’s girl who often gets drawn into Romy’s crimes.
Although the weekend coexistence is already quite hectic, the situation becomes even more complicated when Fred falls in love with Emmanuelle (Daphné Côté Hallé), PhD student in child psychology, and proposes that they live together. The young woman will have to put aside her books and her theories about her and take the field, to establish a peaceful relationship with the three daughters of the man she loves and also with their mothers!
The vibe of Weekend Family is reminiscent of old sitcoms from the early 2000s, such as Jim’s Life, All in the Family, or more recently The Man of the House. Also in this case, in fact, each episode is dedicated to a specific event that involves all the members of the family: a birthday, a trip out of town, the year-end essay. The idea, on the other hand, of a father who clumsily tries to manage three daughters with opposite characters, can bring to mind the Prime Video series by Paolo Genovese All the fault of Freud, starring a psychoanalyst (Claudio Bisio), who – after a series of unexpected circumstances – finds himself again living with his three daughters, now grown up, who will not hesitate to involve him in their sentimental affairs.
Weekend Family Review and Analysis
After the first two episodes of Weekend Family – slower and more surreal than the following ones – the series continues at a good pace, inserting here and there sweet but never cloying moments and funny but not so predictable scenes, as it could be wait. The characters of the show that work best and that give very sweet and funny moments, which we spoke about earlier, are those of Romy and Victoire. The very young actresses are very credible in their roles, with an acting style that is never caricatured and transmitting genuine reactions consistent with their age: they are confusing, loving and – initially – their strong paternal attachment prevents them from accepting Emmanuelle’s presence.
On the other hand, the speech for Clara is more complicated. The eldest of the three is an intelligent teenager who pursues her ideals. She perfectly embodies the values of Generation Z. It is a pity that these characteristics are represented on the screen in a negative and spooky sense: in the eyes of the family, in fact, Clara is often a “heavy” girl, who tries to impose her ideals and that does not respect the sphere of privacy, as it is too tied to social networks.
There are also some issues related to the relationship between Fred and Emmanuelle. In the first minutes of the series, the viewer is shown how the first meeting between the two takes place and, a few moments later, a time jump takes us to the following 6 months, in which the couple is now consolidated and is preparing to live together. The problem then is the following: why should the viewer be passionate about their love story? The moments dedicated to Fred and Emmanuelle as a couple are in fact small and the only situations in which they find themselves questioning their relationship are due to incorrect behavior on the part of Fred, such as when – without permission and invading the privacy of his partner – he decides to peek at his pc, fearing that he might talk about him and his daughters in his research project.
Returning to Emmanuelle, we only know that she is finishing her doctoral thesis in child psychology and that she has chosen not to return to Canada to live with Fred. We know nothing about her family. Moreover, the sides of her character are too forced and tied to being a psychologist: this not only flattens her character but also ends up diminishing this profession, tied on the screen to the usual clichés.
In short, Emmanuelle seems built only to be a sweet companion to Fred – as opposed to the three fearsome ex-wives – and a loving and understanding stepmother to the girls. These dynamics are tangible in the way in which the mothers of Clara, Romy and Victorie relate to the protagonist, treating her as a babysitter: they make a list of the allergies of her daughters, they inform her of the schedules of the various sports. When these are all duties that should be up to Fred, since he is the father.
Weekend Family Review: The Last Words
In conclusion, the new French television series, while not totally succeeding in freeing itself from some patriarchal dynamics, typical of the old American sit-coms, deserves an opportunity, being a pleasant and fun product, to be enjoyed alone or in the company of the whole family.
