Avoids easy shtick and saccharine conclusions, opting instead for character dynamics that the two leads deliver with consummate skill.

Raymond De Felitta's directing is straightforward, tactful, lyrical where necessary and never mawkish, and though Reiser's script offers no grand insights, it's full of sharply observed and funny detail.

Director Raymond de Felitta, who directed a little-seen gem called "Two Family House" a few years ago, gives Falk plenty of room to do his thing. There's an underlying emotional truth even in scenes that seem terribly contrived.

If only Reiser or director Raymond De Felitta had been able to resist the fart jokes and the sloppy male-bonding scenes, this could have been a terrific little movie. As it is, it's shamelessly manipulative shtick brightened by sharply drawn supporting performances.

So powerful and tender are the scenes between Falk and Dukakis that by movie's end, I was wishing that the film had been more about the marriage of Sam and Muriel and less about the father and son.

The movie is sort of a sideways version of "Sideways," even down to a scene where the two men join two women for dinner. The difference is, in "Sideways" the guys desperately want to impress the women, and in The Thing About My Folks, they want to impress each other.

Good-natured but only memorable as a platform for the amusingly feisty Peter Falk, The Thing About My Folks plies a light approach to the problems grown children face when their parents appear on the verge of divorce.

Falk throws himself into the part and almost single-handedly enables this comedy drama to transcend some of its sitcom limitations.

Thing is Woody Allen on a third-grade reading level. Neurosis abounds, but awareness doesn't, and certain ''jokes'' demand additional therapy.

Flirts bravely, though gratingly, with messy, complicated emotions before ultimately drowning them in a warm bath of sticky sentimentality.

Sweet but dramatically inert.

Despite the grumpy, flatulent behavior the script demands of him, Mr. Falk rises above the treacly shenanigans.

It's the same old, same old - except with some really snappy one-liners.

Felitta and Reiser mean nothing but well with this project, but too many lines sound fraudulent, and Reiser, it must be said, is a hopeless ham in the reaction shot department.