The Dinner (2017)

Steve Coogan is a passive-aggressive, difficult-to-be-around former history teacher with an almost debilitating beef against his brother for being their mother's favorite. That, alone, would make for a difficult watch. But throw in a bunch of other stuff -- revealed piecemeal via flashback -- and we've got a melange of trauma: nervous breakdown in front of a classroom, his wife's near death from cancer and his subsequent inability to care for himself and his son, his intense immediate dislike of his brother's adopted black son, his resentment of the close bond his wife and son share, and something about a basketball through the window of a smoke shop.

So, when the brothers and their wives get together for a nice dinner, we're braced for ugliness. But that's not even the BIG secret. The big secret is that their sons harassed and assaulted a homeless woman, accidentally burning her to death. So, the dinner (such as it is with Coogan assaulting the waitstaff and family throughout) is really just an excuse to figure out what to do.

It's a pretty terrible movie full of the worst that humanity has to offer. Tedious.

F