Delayed Reaction: Daddy's Home

The Pitch: Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg play competing dads for the same children.

Which group of movies would you group Daddy's Home with?

• Blades of Glory, Talledega Nights, The Other Guys
• Kicking and Screaming, Elf

Ignoring the Mark Wahlberg connection to The Other Guys, it's pretty obviously the second group, right? The first group are all PG-13 comedies. The second group are all PG. I would expect Daddy's Home to be PG as well, but it's actually PG-13.

I have a bugaboo about this. I think the MPAA rating system is dumb, especially at the R or Unrated line which can limit attendance. It's stupid that 1000 fantasy murders is fine for PG-13 but a little nudity or saying "fuck" twice immediately means an R. One consequence though of the MPAA rating system is that you get a good idea of what a movie is or who it is targeting with that rating.

I didn't enjoy Daddy's Home much, but I would've forgiven a lot more if it had been a PG movie, fair or not. The main note I made while watching this was "the humor is very obvious". Now, ratings for a studio film are not an accident. They could've made a PG cut of this easy enough, and that would've told me that this was a family film. "Family film" is, of course, code for "children's film with just enough in it to make parents not want to kill themselves". When I watch Kicking and Screaming, for example, and a joke is a little juvenile or obvious, I forgive it pretty quickly, because I know the target audience is much younger. PG-13 is supposed to be PG's cool older cousin. Daddy's Home isn't that. It's a movie with Will Ferrell getting electrocuted or driving a motor cycle (in transparent CGI) through a two-story house. This just isn't a "PG-13" movie and that bothers me more than it should. Why wouldn't they edit it until it got PG? It couldn't've been far off? It turns out that audiences weren't as worried about this as I was. With $150 million domestically, this is only behind Elf as Ferrell's highest grossing live-action movie. It's getting a sequel too.

I didn't laugh much watching this, but it was very easy to watch. It's not particularly clever or inventive with the plotting or jokes. Will Ferrell and Mark Walhberg have good chemistry though. Linda Cardellini has been criminally underused for most of her career, but I'm always happy at least to see her in something. It's nice to see people like Hannibal Buress and Bill Burr show up, because I like the idea of them getting an easy paycheck. Thomas Hayden Church does good work as the only person who doesn't realize he's in a family movie. The most interesting part of the movie was the very end when the tables get turned on everyone and John Cena shows up as the new alpha.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend