How entertaining?     ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆

20 December 2015

This a movie review of DADDY'S HOME.

By Hemanth Kissoon

YouTube review:

“If I’m being honest, even I’m rooting for Dusty,” Leo Holt (Thomas Haden Church)
 
Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg have phoned in a lacklustre comedy, a double disappointment as their previous collaboration was so funny: THE OTHER GUYS. As much as one is a fan of Ferrell’s idiot savant shtick, it usually only breaks the rote when channelled through the hands of director Adam McKay (ANCHORMAN, STEP BROTHERS, TALLADEGA NIGHTS, etc.). There is the nagging sense in DADDY’S HOME that the lead duo just turned up on set sans prep and just adlibbed for a bit. There are some chortles to be had, but the humour is too broad and obvious for this reviewer’s tastes.

Brad Whitaker (Ferrell) tells us in voice over that there is a difference between being a “father” and being a “dad” – any guy can be the former, but it takes effort to be the latter. Always wanting to be a dad, his dream was curtailed by an accident at a dentist’s session where the x-ray accidentally swivelled down towards to his groin. You get the picture. However, he is now eight months into a marriage to Sarah (Linda Cardellini), with two young stepchildren, Dylan (Owen Vaccaro) and Megan (Scarlett Estevez). The kids are taking time to warm to him. “This is the first drawing where I’m not dead already,” Brad optimistically observes.
 
The family dynamic lazily epitomises the movie. Sarah is totally out of Brad’s league. Cinema continually has a not-physically attractive guy in a relationship, or seeking a relationship, with a beautiful lady; which seems to say that a woman needs to prove her substance by seeing beyond the surface. When is there ever a gender reversal requiring the same criterion? There is also nearly an eight-year age gap. Sarah says how busy she is with work, but we never witness her employment or even find out what she does for a living. Her character is just a chattel to be fought over, as she passively looks on. Come on filmmakers, is this the best you can do? Add in the movie-cute-saying-and-doing-non-believable-things kids, and only the undemanding audience member will not be shaking their heads at the scraping of the narrative barrel.

After beginning to finally becoming accepted by Dylan and Megan, their absentee biological father, Dusty (Wahlberg), shows up wrecking Brad’s hard won parental dedication. Meant to be charming, Dusty manages to inveigle himself into the Whitaker home – demonstrating what a good egg/people pleaser/pushover Brad is. Sarah doesn’t even put up a fight, seemingly because Brad is the man of the house. Are we in the Stone Age? A filmic attempted-comedy of one-upmanship ensues. The prize: A nuclear family.
 
Sinking the project further is the recycling of jokes:
- Brad works at “The Panda”, America’s number three smooth jazz radio station. Dissing jazz aficionados was already done by Ferrell in ANCHORMAN with his jazz flute playing.
- Getting wasted and embarrassing himself at a basketball game harks back to Ferrell’s “Frank the Tank” in OLD SCHOOL.
- Boss Leo (Haden Church) and Brad have a candid heart to heart conversation, then the camera cuts to the fact this conversation has taken place during a corporate meeting; TV show ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT already delivered that gag.
 
When you have lines like, “Eat my dust… Dusty,” you know the movie is in trouble.

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