Dianne Wiest is proposed over the obvious choices of the director or the lead star because she is funny and heartbreaking in every scene despite less screen time, and she was Oscar-nominated for the role.
Mary Steenburgen is praised as grounded and for breaking out of a thankless wife role, without being named as a pick.
Ron Howard gets a vote because the film followed the Willow flop and three comedies and proved he was a real director, opening thirty years of work.
Steve Martin gets a vote while conceding Wiest is best in the film, because the role shows his full range from Cowboy Gil to scenes with Robards; another participant agrees he shows all five tools.
The opening minivan chaos, with children piling out, a small naked boy wearing a holster and a daughter throwing up, is nominated as capturing life with young kids.
Larry’s dinner pitch for hydroponics is nominated as the kind of sales pitch one host loves in movies.
The principal telling Gil and his wife that Kevin needs a special school is praised as well written, though not the most rewatchable.
The birthday party sequence is favored for Cowboy Gil, the boy banging his pail-covered head into the wall, the grandmother on helium, and the stripper mix-up at the lodge.
Helen discovering Garry’s tape, Keanu Reeves’s character explaining Garry’s masturbation, and the grandmother asking what channel it is are nominated.
Gil and his wife searching the garbage for a retainer, with Gil reflecting that children are perfect until they grow up to be like him, is a smaller nomination.
Robards’s father character seeking Gil’s advice with the no-end-zone speech leads into the Little League game; that stretch is declared a winner and favorite part of the movie.
The Little League dance is called perhaps the best moment of Steve Martin’s career for his physical comedy; he first taunts Clint Howard’s character, and his wife’s perspective contrasts his intensity.
The grandmother’s roller-coaster speech works because it is corny and the characters are dismissive before its meaning lands.
The closing hospital montage is called heartwarming despite a risk of corniness.
The first choice is Dianne Wiest reviewing the photographs Julie and her boyfriend took, balancing concern, fury and admiration, with favorite lines about the vibrator and Garry. — Van Lathan
Two more choices follow: Larry’s confrontation with his father, where their father favors Larry because Larry absorbed his philosophy while Gil rejected it, and the vibrator scene. — Van Lathan
Given the choice between the photographs and the Little League game, the second baseball game is chosen because of Robards and Martin. — Chris Ryan
Another participant says the second baseball game is also their choice.
Brought forward from internet research: NBC ordered a Parenthood series from a rough cut, per Bill Carter in The New York Times, and the 1990 show was canceled after twelve episodes.
The 1990 series cast David Arquette and a young DiCaprio in the Garry role, part of a late-1980s wave of failed movie-based shows such as Ferris Bueller, Working Girl, Uncle Buck and Dirty Dancing.
The later Parenthood series is considered good by those who watched early seasons; Friday Night Lights is an outlier because it reworked the premise.
The Ferris Bueller TV show’s joke about a poster of Matthew Broderick playing him is recalled as hacky.
The adult tape Helen finds was reportedly Blonde Goddess, a 1982 film whose opening parodied Indiana Jones.
Dianne Wiest and Mary Steenburgen were reportedly best friends who worked as waitresses together at the Magic Pan before being cast as sisters-in-law; both won Oscars.
The film is set in St. Louis but was shot in Florida, with palm trees and a Publix visible.
Martha Plimpton dated River Phoenix for nearly five years and began the shoot bald from a prior role, wearing a wig until Ron Howard had her shave her head into a mohawk.
Helen Shaw, who played the grandmother, made her final film here and died in 1997 at age 100.
During filming the cast became obsessed with a Mafia-like murder game played through eye contact, including during the dinner scene.
Steve Martin did not become a parent until age 67 in 2012 despite starring in two iconic parent movies of his generation.
