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Title: It gave me the blahs.
Review: It's sentimental twaddle, competently written (for a hack journalist) but with no imagination and no great craft. Not only isn't it the 'thinking man's Kramer v Kramer', it's a direct steal from that film (check out the improbable kid falling off his bike scene, not to mention the entire set-up). It tries to appropriate some of the Nick Hornby bloke-in-his-thirties feeling but comes up short because Parsons has neither the wit nor the imagination of a Hornby. The characters are sketchy - either stereotypes (the bluff old father with the heart of gold)or just not thought through (the protagonist's wife). Two stars because undemanding souls who need an airport read may find it relatively unoffensive.
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