Getting caught up in Christopher Walken’s iconic oddness makes it easy to sometimes forget what an excellent dramatic actor he really is. Sixty-one and still at the top of his game (and fame), Walken parlayed a moving supporting performance in last year’s Catch Me if You Can into an Oscar nomination, bolstering Leonardo DiCaprio’s criminal hijinks as a tragicomic father at the end of his rope. In his new film, Around the Bend, Walken ventures into similar paternal territory with an equally impressive turn on a darker character in a significantly less effective movie.

Inspired by writer-director Jordan Roberts’ own relationship with his absentee father, Around the Bend is the story of a family of men coming to terms with their roles in each other lives. Jason Lair (the excellent Josh Lucas) lives an ordinary life as a bank employee, with a newly separated marriage and a six-year-old son in tow. They are shacked up with Jason’s sick grandfather, Henry (Michael Caine), a former archaeologist obsessed with his own funeral. Jason’s own father has been wayward and absent his entire adult life, leaving him with emotional (and physical) scars.

When father Turner (Walken) turns up on their doorstep, Jason is dumbfounded as to how to relate to the ex-con. Henry passes away unexpectedly (to the characters, not the audience) at his favorite restaurant—the local KFC—there are issues of a will and inheritance to determine. When it’s revealed that his last wishes entailed the men going on a road trip to literally every KFC in the desert of the Southwest, the reluctant father, son and grandson hit the road to come to terms. The film, with goodness of heart, is an amiable attempt to explore the concept of father-son reunification. It doesn’t quite work.

One of the film’s critical problems is the overdone use of KFC as a major plot device. It’s almost funny the first time Caine takes the whole family to a ‘nice restaurant.’ But the locale, ad nauseum, turns up about every ten minutes in the film, and its presence goes from plot device to product placement to annoying contrivance.

The film wears its heart on its sleeve, and it’s often maudlin; corny. It is also exceedingly well-acted by Lucas and Walken, who capture the tentative, halting reunion with some real moments of feeling. There are also equal doses sit-com humor and a pat conclusion. Caine is all grandfatherly warmth, the kind he’s done so well with age (The Cider House Rules). But the script isn’t up to him.

It’s not that Around the Bend is a bad film, though it’s a pushy, feel-goody trip without many hard edges. There’s no one in the audience who can’t see where this picture is going or figure out its third act revelation. To be fair, the climax of the film does contain a scene of powerful acting between Lucas and Walken, the kind that the film sorely needs to trump its contrived road movie dynamics.