The eldest of the brothers, Jack (played 30 years ago by Jack Mulcahy), is dead, from cancer. He’s survived by Molly (Connie Britton), who hasn’t had a boyfriend since her cheating husband died (in part, apparently, because of the cheating). But that doesn’t prevent her from giving dating advice to her niece, Patty, who’s just announced her engagement to Terence Joseph (Bryan Fitzgerald), the damp squib boyfriend she collected at law school and slotted neatly into her life planner.
You can’t marry the only person you’ve ever slept with, Aunt Molly insists. That way lies infidelity. Barry agrees, mostly because he can’t stand TJ. Tommy agrees, mostly because he’s never met a woman he’s serious about (well, you can guess what’s coming on that score…)
The wheels are set in motion quickly enough for a cavalcade of romantic, sexual and familial complications. And in that, it does indeed have a faint echo of a certain slice of Woody Allen’s oeuvre. What it doesn’t have is the sharpness of insight, the crackling dialogue, or the existential angst that underpinned even his lightest work.
The Family McMullen isn’t exactly terrible, but nor is it anything to write home about. Suffice it to say that if this were Burns’ first film, it might also have been his last rather than merely his latest.