Daddy's Home : Movie Review on Web Wombat Entertainment

The people behind Daddy’s Home are goodat what they do. Both the various writers and director work almost exclusively on thistype of broad, silly comedy; they’re notstraight-to-DVD bombs, butif one of them was on telly while you were folding the washing,you’d probably leave it on. Some of these efforts are better than others. Co-writer and director Sean Anders (Dumb and Dumber To, We’re The Millers), along with fellow writers Brian Burns (Entourage) and JohnMorris (She’s Out Of My League, Horrible Bosses 2), have created another vehicle for a “straight”, silly WillFerrell to team up/dobattle with a kinda-scary meathead Mark Wahlberg (they previously starred together in 2010’sThe Other Guys) in a storyof family. And it sure is a...movie.
Ferrell plays Brad, a smooth jazz radio exec (who lives in a much, much nicer house than I imagine he and his wife can afford - why is everyone in movies a millionaire?) who is loving life playing stepdad to his wife Sarah’s (Linda Cardellini ) kids. As per usual with comedies of thisilk, “everything is justfine, until…” Dusty, Sarah’s super cool ex husbandand father of the kids shows up. Brad and Dusty are deliberately set up as literal polar opposites;Brad is old-fashioned, sweet, naive and dorky, Dusty is cliche cool, rough aroundthe edges, athletic and ruggedly charming. There’s no nuance to either of them, butthere isn’treally any to speak of in the rest of the film, either.
Daddy’s Home has some funny moments. The ones thatare less reliant on a grown man horribly injuringhimself, or animals urinating,weren’t half bad; Thomas Haden Church (Sideways, Spiderman 3) elicits some goodlaughs as Brad’s filter-less boss,and comedian Hannibal Buress , as handyman-cum-sidekick/comedic relief Griff is, as always, a lot of fun. But there isn’tmuch else to say aboutit. It wasn’t an offensive film: it didn’t have the sexism/transphobia/fat-shaming/etc of truly woeful comedies, butthere was nothingto make the film particularly happily memorable either. Like most of these middle-of-the-road comedies, there are a handful of standoutlines, butthe rest of the film otherwise flies by.
Will Ferrell is such a fine actor, both dramatically and comedically, so it bothers me to see him continually do these MOR films. Obviously, he has done a lot of films playing more of the meathead role (Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, Semi Pro, etc.), so it’s nice to see him in the more “tanpants geek” role thathe often slipped into on
Saturday Night Live . But they still didn’thave nearly enoughto jokes to keep the film afloat.