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When a family is labeled “dysfunctional,” sociologists usually mean one in which there are constant arguments or one with kids who are bouncing off the walls because their parents are divorced or one which includes a wacky but adorable grandparent or a fussy gay uncle. In Introducing the Dwights, Cherie Nowlan who directs, and Keith Thompson who wrote the screenplay, consider the Dwight family dysfunctional not only because it includes a divorced mother and a spastic teenager, but because the matriarch, who does borscht-belt style, raunchy stand-up comedy in some of the less sophisticated clubs near Sydney, Australia, does her best to prevent her handsome, normal, son from coming of age. So eager is she to keep him under her roof that she tries her best to alienate the one girlfriend he brings home who looks like a future wife. By her overprotection, she has rendered the young man less than articulate in the presence of women his age, virginal in his approach (giving a woman the impression that he’s just not interested in sex or in her), and clinging to his cell phone ready to bolt from the girl’s quarters when paged by his mom.
