Daddy's Home is a cringe comedy starring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Linda Cardellini, Owen Vaccaro, Thomas Haden Church, Hannibal Buress, and Scarlett Estevez.
Brad (Ferrell) has always wanted to be a father, but winds up infertile (I say "winds up" because it's the first of many stupid gags; a dental hygienist accidentally aims an xray at his nuts). He marries Sara (Cardellini, far and away the best thing about this movie) and thereby becomes a stepdad to her kids, Dylan (Vaccaro) and Megan (Estevez). And although they kind of hate him at first, there's a lovely montage at the beginning of the movie where, as told through Megan's crayon drawings, Brad gradually becomes accepted into the family and patiently allows the kids to adjust. Hmm, I thought. Maybe this won't be so bad.
And then Sara's ex, the kids' biological dad, Dusty (Wahlberg) shows up, and things go south real fast. I'm not talking about within the fiction of the movie - we know from the basic setup that the conflict of the movie is going to be Brad, a mild-mannered but kind man, against Dusty, a cool but probably irresponsible dude, and the kids kind of hang in the balance. That's fertile ground for a story. But fuck me.
OK, so, Dusty isn't cool. He's fucking awful. He immediately gaslights both Brad and the kids, actively trying not only to get back into the kids' lives but turn both them and Sara against Brad. Sara, for the most part, sees through his bullshit, but does not back up Brad or put her foot down in ways that she clearly can (and, later in the film, does). And this isn't small stuff - Dusty invites himself to stay in the house, and then invites a stranger (Buress) to stay as well just kind of out of nowhere. He doesn't just try and ingratiate himself to the kids, he utterly disrupts their lives, brings home a dog he found in the gutter (like...wouldn't you think that might be dangerous? Especially if you see this fuckin' dog?), builds a full-on skate park in the backyard, and manipulates Brad and Sara into trying to get pregnant, figuring that since Brad can't, he can use that as a wedge between them (it backfires because Brad can still father children, but that's not the point).
For his part, Brad falls completely for every hook Dusty baits and eventually drives himself out of the house, whereupon Sara remembers that it's her house too and boots Dusty and Griff out. Dusty (trying to get back with Sara for reasons that are not totally clear to me, but we'll get to that) agrees to take on all the things that Brad does, and I thought, oh, good, we're going to see Dusty come to realize that Brad's time management, patience, and willingness to be present is what...oh, wait, nope, he can't even manage school drop-off without crumbling.
This all ends up more or less like you think it will; Dusty and Brad come to appreciate what the other brings to the table (more on that later), Dusty buys a house and makes it into a literal castle (wtf), and in one of the only funny bits of the movie, marries a woman (Alessandra Ambrosio) with a young daughter (Didi Costine) whose ex is John fucking Cena.
Oof. OK. So, there's a lot wrong with this movie, but I think the main thing is that it doesn't live up to its premise. If what we're going for here is the basics: cool but absent bio-dad vs. loving but [something] stepdad, then that's a pretty good recipe for comedy. But first of all, Dusty is only cool by a 13-year-old boy's version of cool. He rides a motorcycle, he knows pro athletes, and he...maybe kills people for money? But he's not the "detached" kind of cool, he's enthusiastic about being a dad, kind of, but he only expresses that at Brad's (and by extension, Sara's) expense.
Meanwhile, Brad doesn't have a specific flaw. His only real failing in the movie is that he wants so badly to be a good dad that he gets sucked into Dusty's shit, which if Dusty were an antagonist full stop, would be fine. But Dusty is treated as someone we're supposed to like, which means he needs to be a foil for Brad, and that's just not how he comes off.
It's annoying, because the premise of the movie is solid and the movie is well-cast, but it can't decide how over-the-top it wants to be and although it wants to have arcs for the main characters, it forgets to show how those arcs actually work.
Oh, also, Brad's explanation to Dusty that most of being a dad is taking shit fucking boils my blood, because it just plays into crappy sitcom stereotypes of dads, and as a dad, I ain't here for it. Bleah.
My Grade: F
Rewatch Value: IINSIAIFWT
Next up: Evil Dead Rise
No comments:
Post a Comment