The Thing About My Folks, that amusing and surprisingly touching little family film with Paul Reiser and Peter Falk?…the one I first wrote about after seeing it at the Santa Barbara Film Festival last February? It opened limited yesterday (9.16) and…well, do what you think is best. It’s not a Luchino Visconti film but it has a certain caringness about it…paternal love, compassion, recognizable family values. “With movies that are quality-level and playing well, there’s two kinds of buzz — good word-of-mouth and what we call compelling word-of-mouth,” Jeff Dowd said earlier this year. “The Thing About My Folks has compelling word-of-mouth, which you have when the movie is value-based….like The Passion of the Christ. That was a movie that culturally embraced the values of a certain audience. Fahrenheit 9/11 had a value-based appeal, and so did My Big Fat Greek Wedding. People want to see adult films that are positive and empowering and also entertaining, and this is a real family-values film. It’s what people really go through in holding families together…without being ideological or getting into any kind of red-state thing. It’s playing just as strongly in blue states. Throw a dart at a map of the country and it’ll play there.”