Delicious black comedy with bite

WHO would have thought actor-turned-director Jason Bateman would one day give Wes Anderson a run for his money in making his own delicious black comedy about a dysfunctional family?

Bateman's sophomore effort, The Family Fang - based on a 2011 novel of the same name by Kevin Wilson and adapted by Pulitzer Prize-winning screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire - is as bittersweet as anything Anderson has made and even features Christopher Walken taking on a wickedly oddball role the former would have cast his regular collaborator Bill Murray in.

But that is also where the comparisons end because Bateman's film is nowhere as overstylised and staged so it feels more real even if the pacing and direction are slightly clumsy at times.