Al Pacino makes the worst of the biggest disaster his name’s been attached to since sickening audiences with the contemptibly cuddlesome Author! Author! Pacino is all struts and scarves as the drugged and disillusioned rock star boilerplate who has an It’s a Wonderful Life moment after receiving a long-lost letter written to him by John Lennon. Enter the son (Bobby Canavale) and granddaughter (Giselle Eisenberg) he never met — with Leukemia and ADHD, respectively — and what little satirical bite there was on the horizon dawns into a gooey Hallmark haze. Writer-director Dan Fogelman’s insidious strain of geezer porn stops just short of a bone marrow transplant to ripple the hearts of Academy voters. Christopher Plummer neatly steals every scene as Danny’s patient handler, while love interest Annette Bening tries damn hard to become one with the random changeableness of her mousy hotel manager. Spoiler alert: this would have been a five-star review had the film’s off-camera curtain line been a dumbstruck, “Danny Collins?!” (2015) — Scott Marks
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