Film Review: Daddy's Home

Daddy’s Home. Rated PG (mild crude humour, sexual references and coarse language). 96 minutes. Directed by Sean Anders. Screenplay by Brian Burns, Sean Anders and John Morris.
 
Just in time for what remains of the holiday season comes this occasionally hilarious film about Brad (Will Ferrell), an earnest, well-meaning guy who is desperate to be accepted as stepfather to his new wife Sara’s (Linda Cardellini) two children – Megan (Scarlett Estevez) and Dylan (Owen Vaccaro) – from her previous marriage to Dusty (Mark Wahlberg).

Just as the children appear to be coming around to accepting the devoted and hyper-emotional Brad into their lives, the athletic, super cool, motorbike-riding Dusty decides to make an impromptu visit to meet his ex-wife’s new husband and spend some time with his children. With the battlelines well and truly drawn, courtesy of a spectacular sequence when Brad pretends he can ride Dusty’s motorbike, the two dads go head-to-head to prove who is the best man for the job.

The writers, who collaborated on Dumb and Dumber (2014), Mr Popper’s Penguins (2011), She’s Out of My League (2010) and Hot Tub Time Machine (2010), hit their marks early, and with the exception of a couple of slides into what might be considered well above PG-rated terrain, the script bubbles along under Anders’ solid direction.

Ferrell and Wahlberg first teamed up as a couple of hapless New York City cops in The Other Guys (2010), and on this occasion, their easy-going camaraderie underpins the comedy beautifully, which results in it never becoming too dark or hostile. Even though there is much at stake for each of their characters, the sense that they admire and respect the importance of the other’s role in the children’s lives provides Daddy’s Home with unexpected heart and soul.

This review was commissioned by the West Australian Newspaper Group.

Film Review: That's My Boy

That’s My Boy. Rated MA 15+ (strong sexual references, crude humour and coarse language). 116 minutes. Directed by Sean Anders. Screenplay by David Caspe.

Verdict: How this grotesque and incomprehensible cinematic sludge ever got released will forever remain a mystery.

For people who like their comedy to be of the loud, crass, artless and rude variety, this long foray into mostly grotesque and incomprehensible rubbish will more than likely be your thing. While most of it is as entertaining as taking out the garbage, at least the filmmakers don’t even remotely pretend to aim for any subtly, innuendo or subtext. The humour – such as it is – is broad and severe, and if you’re still sitting in your seat by the end of the film’s eye-poppingly un-PC opening sequence, you need to know that it only gets worse.

When schoolboy Donny Berger (Justin Weaver) gets his teacher pregnant, he becomes an instant celebrity while she gets sentenced to 30 years jail for having sex with a minor. Years later, the now-adult Donny (Adam Sandler) decides to find his now-adult son Han Solo (Andy Samberg) in order to be able to film a reunion segment for a reality television show and be paid the $45,000 he owes to the tax office.

From beginning to end, That’s My Boy reeks of a certain kind of career-ending desperation – with the only real surprise being the appearance of Hollywood heavy-weights Susan Sarandon (Thelma and Louise, Dead Man Walking) as the older, imprisoned school teacher and James Caan (The Godfather, Misery) as a priest. The rest of the cast (especially the unfortunate Mr Samberg), should win an award for persevering with the nonsense they have to work with while Mr Sandler takes way too much screen time with his boisterous Donny who boasts not a single redeeming or likable feature.

In a cluttered comedy film marketplace, it’s difficult to know how this film even managed to secure a release. The only possible reason is that someone, somewhere, thought there was a market that still existed for this kind of cinematic sludge. For the sake of the rest of us, I hope they’re wrong.