Daddy?s Home ? 3 out of 5
Like many people in ?Murica, my girlfriend and I have a
tradition of seeing a movie on Christmas morning?it?s all a part of our
never-ending war on the holiday. Often
we see a comedy because who wants to see anything super heavy on Jesus?
birthday? Also, she vetoed my idea of
seeing The Force Awakens for the fifth time and we ended up picking the new
comedy that saw another team-up of Will Ferrell and Mark ?Don?t call me Marky
Mark? Wahlberg; Daddy?s Home. Well, the holidays are now over and my life is finally calming down a bit so I am able to finally sit down and review this one. Join me, won't you? WON'T YOU?!?
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| Paramount Pictures I'm guessing that these children are fans of the Lakers. Call it a hunch. |
Brad Whitaker (Ferrell) is one of those ?good guys.? He has a great job, he volunteers for
everything, he replaces the toilet paper roll after he finishes the old one and
is desperately trying to be a great step-father to his wife?s children. However, one day the kid?s real dad; Dusty
(Wacky Wahlberg?it?s your new nickname, Mark, and since I made it, we are now
best friends) returns to the picture and decides he is going to force Brad out
and get back in the good graces of his ex ?wife (Linda Cardellini). Dusty is everything Brad isn?t?he?s tough,
handsome and the quintessential ?bad boy.?
Now Brad has his work cut out for him as Dusty shoves his way into his
life and is ready to push him out of the family he was working so hard to
forge.
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| Paramount Pictures It's funny because if it happened in real life, he'd most likely be dead. |
I am a big fan of the other film that saw Ferrell and Wacky
Wahlberg team up for; The Other Guys. That
film nearly made me piss myself when I saw it and it continues to be one of
those films I turn to when I crave a good laugh or am seeking to turn a bad
mood into a good one. The trailer for
this one made me chuckle and I was fully prepared to see something as funny as The
Other Guys but found a comedy that was really only entertaining in the
beginning and end moments.
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| Paramount Pictures I'm guessing the little one on the left is Mark Wahlberg. |
Not surprisingly, Ferrell and Wacky Wahlberg are playing off
each other fantastically but the film started to drag for me in the
middle. The mean-spirited humor of
seeing these two father figures fight for their children?s love is engaging and
humorous when it starts but it began to grate on me during the Second Act and I
started to find I was feeling too sorry for the character of Brad to find even
the best comedy sequences to be funny.
Dusty?s character went from being a funny jerk to just being a scumbag
that I didn?t want to see anymore and it made the entire experience completely
joyless to watch. Even though it started
very fun, I started to feel like the film had lost its entertainment value and
that I was now watching a comedy that was growing weaker by the minute. However, I was wrong.
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| Paramount Pictures Seriously though, the trailer basically gave you all the best jokes for free. |
After sitting through the mid-portion of the film, I found
the final phase of the feature really brought me back as the two characters of
Brad and Dusty (not surprisingly) reconcile and become friends. Sure, I knew in the back of my brain that
this was the obvious direction the story would take but the events happening to
the clearly nice guy that is Brad started to feel too awful to really see it
make a believable turn around--or, at the very least, one that would feel authentic and natural.
Thankfully, the film does it and does so in a way that didn?t feel
forced and it ended up ending the film on a high note for me that had me
laughing harder than I did at the beginning.
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| Paramount Pictures Wait, I'm being told that THIS is Mark Wahlberg. Yep, it can clearly be seen that the character of Brad has some real competition now... Actually, this makes the movie make a lot more sense to me. |
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| Paramount Pictures This film has a company logo that involves a saxophone playing panda and we focus on the family drama?!? |
Aside from this issue, I did find Daddy?s Home to be a fun
but, ultimately, kinda mediocre work of comedy.
Sure, Ferrell and my new BFF Wacky Wahlberg are great together and
really have tremendous chemistry and there are some amazing hysterical scenes
with Thomas Hayden Church, Bobby Cannavale, Hannibal Buress and Bill Burr but
the jokes and gags aren?t strong enough for me to make this film something
other than a comedy I?ll watch once or twice in my life. I definitely had some fun watching it?except
for the mid-section that made me uncomfortable as hell and made me realize that
I wouldn?t have the gumption to take the abuse Brad was going through and would
have just called it quits and left them all behind but that?s because I?m a
quitter (lesson here, kids, is always run from your problems)?but, sadly, I
didn?t find it as funny as the other film that starred these two.
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