Delayed Reaction: Vacation Friends

Premise: A normal couple become friends with a crazy couple on vacation who they never expect to see again, and then, well, they see them again.

 

Look. This isn’t a great movie. It’s a comedy that didn’t make me laugh very much, so I’m not sure it’s possible to get this above a Weakly Don’t Recommend. It did a number of things that surprised me though. It helps that I didn’t watch a trailer for it.

 

The first third of the movie is the vacation. That is an unexpected amount of time. I either figured that the whole movie would be the vacation or it would be a very brief segment at the beginning. Most of the movie is actually on Lil Rel Howery and Yvonne Orji’s wedding weekend. Even more unexpected though is the way that the movie treats John Cena and Meredith Hagner. The way most movies would do this is that Lil Rel Howery is the Frank Grimes and functions as the protagonist/villain of the movie. Cena and Hagner would be malevolent forces that no one else sees though until he ultimately gets everyone to see the truth and redeems himself. Think, The Cable Guy. Or, if not that, Cena and Hagner would be agents of chaos who are villains except the movie doesn’t realize it. Think, Melissa McCarthy in Identity Thief. This movie has shades of both of those, but there’s a little more nuance to it. Cena and Hagner aren’t bad people. They are people that will get you in a lot of trouble, but their intentions are good. The fact that other people like them isn’t smoke and mirrors. They are good at things and have value. In a lot of ways this is just a heightened version of that fear we have of two unrelated friend groups (or friends and family) meeting. You are different people in each group and you don’t know how to act when both are together. You may appreciate that you can be reserved and quiet around one group and not always on, and with the other group you like that you can unwind. The loud group is the one we tend to be embarrassed about, but that doesn’t mean they are the bad group or that either group is the bad group. The argument of this movie is that you can bring out the best of both groups by letting worlds collide. I wasn’t expecting this movie to be that smart in that way.

 

I think Lil Rel Howery is a little miscast. This movie asks him to be the straight man a lot. He’s good at parts of that. A lot of his comic persona is based on his reaction to people doing crazy shit, but his reaction is just as outsized. He has to hold a lot of that in. Being a comedy lead is a thankless job. I wish Yvonne Orji had more to do on her own too. She could’ve taken more of the straight man duties to unleash Howery more. As is, she switched between being on the same page with him and being annoyed by him too much. John Cena has played this role in a lot of movies and he’s good at it. I wish he would expand his bag of trick a little more. Something like Blockers had him try something new. This has him back as a super sincere, super competent former army guy. I mainly know Meredith Hagner from Search Party, although she’s been in a ton. I wish she had more to do too. The leads of the movie are really Howery and Cena despite the title suggesting it would be more of the foursome.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don’t Recommend