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While I generally enjoy the “Anchorman” movies and other comedic films starring Will Ferrell and directed by Adam McKay, I never imagined myself looking at another film and saying that I missed the smooth comedic tone of such films. However, that is exactly what happened. In contrast, “Daddy’s Home,” starring Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, and co-executive produced by McKay and, in an apparently crucial difference here, directed by Sean Anders, is such a sloppy, erratic mess that it makes the wild and crazed to the point of sometimes flailing tenor of “Anchorman” and other such Ferrell vehicles seem like finely tuned Logitech vehicles.
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The setup is familiar and predictable; Ferrell portrays Brad Whitaker, a simpering, good-hearted wimp and square who becomes the stepfather to two adorable moppets and is soon forced to compete with their ultra-cool biological father Dusty (Mark Wahlberg), who is more aggressive in his passive aggressiveness than is customary in this genre of films. He’s already one step ahead of Brad in that the kids make no attempt to hide their disdain for Brad, who they perceive to be a product of the parenting book. Brad isn’t the only one in this group who follows the rules to the letter. Everything about the film is rote, from the opportunistic cynicism of the opening credits song (The Pixies’ “Here Comes Your Man”) to the part where we’re expected to laugh at a seven-year-old girl saying “I think it’s sweet that he’s crying like a bitch.”
Daddys Home Quiz
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Anders, who shares co-writing credit with John Morris and Brian Burns on this film, is also the mind behind such films as “We’re The Millers” and “Horrible Bosses 2,” among others. What he brings to the table is neither particularly pleasant nor particularly amusing. The film’s final third contains a scene in which Brad decides to turn the tables on his adversary Dusty, who has previously been undermining Brad by demonstrating his handyman abilities and burdening him with the responsibility of caring for the children’s “pet,” a junkyard dog named “Tumor.” At a Lakers game (this movie takes place in a universe where Kobe Bryant, who makes a cameo appearance, is still the idol of millions rather than a somber reminder of the ego-over-substance state of contemporary professional basketball), Brad becomes intoxicated and ends up being selected to take a shot at the basket at halftime. As a prelude to the following joke, it is established that a group of children in wheelchairs is seated courtside. Yes, the song “Daddy’s Home” is set in that location. No, it is not amusing.
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The film also fails to be amusing because it casts Linda Cardellini as Brad’s wife Sarah and gives her nothing to do other than dress up in swanky clothes and look concerned at Brad, with the exception of one scene set at a fertility clinic in which she is compelled to gaze longingly at Dusty’s genitals. (It’s a long story.) However, despite the fact that Wahlberg and Ferrell clearly have the talent to bring some solid comic interplay to the project, they aren’t together on screen for more than a minute or so before some laborious sight gag is dragged in to break them up. Whenever there is a scene involving Thomas Haden Church and/or Hannibal Burress, things pick up. Church portrays the manager of “The Panda,” a smooth-jazz radio station where Brad works; he’s constantly giving idiotically profane advice or telling idiotically profane stories to keep Brad entertained. Ironic responses from Ferrell are always spot-on in their wit. In fact, one of my colleagues commented after the screening that he would have enjoyed a film that was entirely set in “The Panda.” Hannibal Buress, who plays a contractor who is hired and then fired by Brad as a result of his allowing Dusty to get “inside his head,” as Cardellini’s character warned him, is also very funny after he is “adopted” by Dusty and given a bunk at the Whitaker household, which is becoming increasingly overcrowded. To the extent that I suspect, or perhaps would just like to believe, that the lion’s share of their work was improvised, these two actors give the audience a sense of What Could’ve Been. Because, in contrast to the material Anders forces his performers to perform (which, again, I suspect is the material that most closely resembles “We’re The Millers”), it is actually amusing. However, I must confess that I was disappointed with the film’s conclusion, which comes after the entire scenario has delivered its five minutes of earnestness, and serves to cut into the approximately eighty minutes of more or less complete crude sourness that preceded it.
For more personality quizzes check this: Ride Along 2 Quiz.
