super similar to Wilder Days

I liked this movie a whole lot, laughed pretty hard, loved the family portrayal, loved the writing.

There is one weird thing though, and that's that Peter Falk was in a movie a few years earlier which had many similarities to this film. It's called Wilder Days. He played the father of a buttoned-up guy played by Tim Daly. Peter Falk's character "escapes" from a retirement home and takes his grandson along with him on a road trip to Maine. During this trip he shows how clever he really is, and uses a stick to beat up a troublemaking punk. Tim Daly sets off in search of him, finds him, and then the threesome have an idyllic few days of bonding in the Maine Woods.

There are other similarities which I will not list, so as not to spoil the film in case someone wants to see it.

The main difference is that in Wilder Days, Falk's fatherly failings were that he was TOO much fun and TOO unreliable, whereas in The Thing his failing is that he was a workaholic. But in both movies, the father and son discover the truth about each other and realize how much they love each other.