BEFORE: Ah, a film about how to spend your leisure time, or needing leisure time, or something - so I hope you had some leisure time this past weekend, and I hope you spent it well. Just as Memorial Day is the "unofficial" start of summer (whatever that means, but every single news anchor says that like it does) then this week is the "unofficial" start of Father's Day films, I've already counted "Fear" as a very father-centric film, this looks like it will be the second, and there are more to come.
Mark Wahlberg carries over again from "Shooter" and that makes six films in a row, that puts him on top of the leader board for the year, but if I stick to the plan he'll be passed by Kevin Hart really soon.
I'll all for conserving my efforts right about now, I did look up those new documentaries about the Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones, and they should slot right in between docs I already have on the schedule, so I won't have to tear down the chain I made and re-build it, and then while I was on Hulu looking up that Stones doc I saw there was one there about Joan Baez, and what the hell, I looked at the cast list and I found a place for that one, too. But NO MORE changes after that, because if I could just stop looking up more movies, I can stay on the current course and cruise all the way to the end of July, past Father's Day, past Independence Day, and then the doc block, I don't have to program anything until August 1 is approaching, and by then I might already be thinking about how to get to...horror movies? Maybe not, I'll think about how to get to some back-to-school films and then hopefully a path to October will be easier to see from there.
THE PLOT: When a stay-at-home dad who dedicates all his time to his children is persuaded to take time off for himself, he gets mixed up in the wild shenanigans of his childhood friend who's celebrating his 44th birthday.
AFTER: I guess Dwayne Johnson wasn't available for this one, so Kevin Hart had to find a new muscled man to play the role of his character's best friend. It's fine, the top movie stars are more or less interchangeable, anyway, I mean, does it really matter which A-list celebrity you pair the funny man with? You can put Danny DeVito up against anybody, from Michael Douglas to Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he's still going to be funny, right?
The hook here is that these two guys used to be best friends, but they grew up and became two very different people, one the responsible family man and the other one is still partying hard into his 40's, and there was a birthday-based skydiving incident that was just too much for Sonny to handle, so he stopped going to Huck's increasingly wilder and wilder annual destination celebrations. Sonny is now a house-husband, or stay-at-home dad, or whatever you want to call the primary caregiver for two kids if that person is a male. This is very modern and forward, of course, because some moms work and earn more money than their husbands could, so in those instances it makes perfect sense for Dad to take a few years off from his job, or find a lesser job that he can do from home, if he's the one who gets the kids ready for school in the morning and makes sure they do their homework at night, while Mom works late sometimes. But then of course Mom might feel she's somehow less-than if she's not spending as much time with her kids, or if she's not exhibiting those skills that we've come to accept as "motherly". But really, we're all working on this to some degree, trying to get beyond the old gender-based stereotypes, there's no reason why a Dad can't cook breakfast, go to PTA meetings, get snacks for soccer practice, and volunteer to run the auditions for the school talent show. All of those things are important to the kids, even if there's no salary involved.
But when Sonny's wife decides to take her kids to re-connect with them at her parents' house, it's also an opportunity to show that she CAN take care of them for a few days, while Sonny relaxes at home by himself for the first time in years. However, after a few days he's very bored, and attempts to fill the hours with activities like golfing and eating BBQ turn out to be disastrous, and all of his friends who are parents at his kids' school are either busy or have terrible ideas for how he should spend his time, so he decides to go visit his old friend Huck on one of his wild birthday trip-parties. (What could POSSIBLY go wrong?)
Well, just about everything that the writers could imagine, of course. When Sonny joins the group of Huck's friends and co-workers, they start with some public skinny dipping, then all change into identical track suits and board a bus. Uh-oh, this is all starting to feel rather cult-like, so this trip might end with everyone drinking poisoned Kool-Aid and waiting for the UFO to come out from behind the comet and pick them up. OK, so it's not that kind of party. Instead the bus takes them all to the desert where "Huck-a-palooza" is taking place, unfortunately it's not a concert but just a compound where they have to share yurts, forage for their own food and go to the bathroom in what are essentially buckets. I guess there's a certain type of person who appreciates this sort of roughing-it experience, but really, nobody wants to hang out with those people.
After Sonny has an encounter with an incredibly fake-looking CGI mountain lion, he gains the respect of the other campers, but the revelry is cut short when a loan shark arrives with his female enforcer (how very progressive), demanding the $47,000 that Huck owes them. And if you're wondering who would spend so much money on a desert birthday retreat when he owes someone so much money, well, that's irresponsible Huck for you. Sonny, meanwhile, learns that his wife has been visited by her client, Armando, while she's on holiday, and he starts to get jealous, like why didn't his wife mention that her rich male client would be there, and is that why she didn't want her husband to come along?
Sonny and Huck are forced to move the party, once the loan shark burns down the campground. The party bus heads to Sonny's house, where Huck's friends start mingling with Sonny's PTA friends, and meanwhile Sonny and Huck go to Armando's house and pull some stupid pranks at his house, like sticking spatulas down their pants and stealing all of his left shoes. Then they accidentally injure his giant tortoise on their way out.
What's weird here is that there are so many details offered that were unnecessary - why is the amount owed the loan shark $47,000 and not an even $50K? Why does this rich guy want to buy an island for tortoises, and not some other animal? What was up with the track suits, that little detail tells us nothing about Huck's character, but it does make things easy for the film's wardrobe department, so was this just a case of the story following some kind of budgetary restraint? I'm left scratching my head about so many things here.
Similarly, there are way too many specific details about very minor characters - did the screenwriter think that would make the film feel more "real"? It had the opposite effect. The one parent who leaves his family at Legoland so he can come back and party with Sonny by crushing up and snorting his kid's ADHD medication - that's a very unique combination of things, but it doesn't add up to comedy per se, it's still just a random collection of things that happen to this one guy. And the WHOLE movie is like this, in one form or another. Why is there a Lego Death Star? Why do they delete episodes of "Blue Bloods" from Armando's DVR? Why does Sonny's son specifically watch "Eddie Murphy: Raw"? Perhaps there are reasons for all of these things, but perhaps not, it's tough to say.
I think, though, that the more the script focused on these specifics, the less time that left to be funny, if that's possible. Most viewers probably won't find humor in the name-checking of shows like "Storage Wars" or "Naked & Afraid", because those are just cultural references, not punchlines. "Oh, they're talking about a show I know" is a poor substitute for laughing at jokes, just saying.
Also starring Kevin Hart (last seen in "Think Like a Man Too"), Regina Hall (ditto), Jimmy O. Yang (last seen in "80 for Brady"), Luis Gerardo Mendez (last seen in "Chariie's Angels" (2019)), Che Tafari, Amentii Sledge, Diane Delano (last seen in "Jeepers Creepers 2"), Andrew Santino (last seen in "Friendsgiving"), John Amos (last seen in "Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"), Anna Maria Horsford (last seen in "Heartburn"), Shira Gross, Kavya Thakrar, Michelle DeShon, Sharon Gardner, Kieran Roberts, Shyaam Karra (last seen in "The Host"), Connie Chen (last seen in "American Psycho"), Naomi Ekperigin, Drew Droege (last seen in "The Circle"), Deborah S. Craig, Antione Grant, Manika Beverly, Oren Skoog, Alexis Rhee (last seen in "Because I Said So"), Cathy Chang, Tani Hala, Koji Niiya, Octavio Solorio, Carlos Javier Rivera, Tahj Mowry, Prisca Kim, Carlo Rota (last seen in "The Boondock Saints"), Melanie Minichino, Jameelah, Chau Long, Syd Skidmore, Thomas Ochoa, Kamilah Michelle Hatcher, Ilia Isorelys Paulino, Kayden Alexander Koshelev, James Chan, Amanda Barlow, Michael Krause, Dreyson Ford with a cameo from Seal (last seen in "Jagged").
RATING: 4 out of 10 reasons to admire George Clooney
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