Daddy’s Home reunites Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg, who proved to be a good comedic pairing in The Other Guys. The film mostly plays up the same dynamic, but puts them in a more contentious context. And it just doesn’t work as well the second time around. The film is more built around big, clunky looking slapstick sequences that don’t take advantage of the ability of these actors to take comedic premises to interesting places.
Milquetoast Brad (Will Ferrell) wants nothing more than to be accepted by his two stepkids as their dad. Just when he thinks he's making progress, the kids' alpha male biological father Dusty (Mark Wahlberg) suddenly returns. It turns out that Dusty wasn't even aware that his ex-wife Sara (Linda Cardellini) had remarried. Now he comes back with the intention of getting his family back. Brad is convinced that he can make this work at first, but it soon becomes clear that Dusty is playing mind games and competing for the family's affections.
The film is short on the inspired bouts of weirdness that have fueled so many of Will Ferrell’s movies. There are just a couple of scenes that show Ferrell truly at his element, the actor and his fellow comedians taking a slight premise and following it to an absurd extreme. This film seems much more reliant on big, ridiculous comedic set pieces, ones that tend to involve visual effects and big slapstick moments that leave Ferrell’s character in various states of distress. These big, VFX-enhanced gags aren’t worth many laughs, leaving the film feeling a little limp in the comedy department.
Conceptually, the movie has trouble finding its footing. The problems start with Sara, who is a weirdly passive character basically doing nothing as she witnesses these two gorillas slug it out. Like so many of these modern comedies, the female character in this film just isn’t a participant in the comedy. In spite of getting the excellent Linda Cardelinni in the role, Sara rarely gets the chance to be funny. And with her out of the picture, the conflict between the two main characters feels fairly artificial. It certainly makes the resolution feel a little convenient.
There are some good components to this story, though. It gets to kind of a nice place eventually. Though it’s easy to tell where it’s all going to go, but the movie does manage a few moments of grace getting there. A lot of it has to do with the performances. Again, the film isn’t the best platform for Ferrell’s particular talents, but he still gives it his all. His reunion with Wahlberg doesn’t net as many laughs as it did in The Other Guys, mainly because Wahlberg doesn’t get to play the fool as much in this movie. Thomas Haden Church and Hannibal Buress shine in small roles. And it must be said again that the movie squanders Linda Cardellini.
Daddy’s Home is best in the rare moments that it gets strange. There is a bit near the end where three of the characters get stuck discussing the merits of trying to create a dramatic moment that failed to happen organically. And in this scene, the talents of the actors take center stage, and the laughs just build up. But the film mostly works with easier, broader gags that don’t take full advantage of the talent that it possesses. In its pursuit of the easier laugh, the film feels thoroughly mediocre.
My Rating:
