Daddy’s Home 2 * (2017, Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Mel Gibson, John Lithgow, Linda Cardellini, John Cena) – Movie Review

If you want to put yourself in a bad mood before Christmas, this is an even better bet than A Bad Moms Christmas. A dismally unfunny, slapstick, sentimental script sinks this wretched seasonal sequel to the reasonably amusing Daddy’s Home (2015). Strained to the point of desperate, it has all the vices of the first film, but magnified five times. Forget going to Oxford Street on Xmas Eve, this film really is the nightmare before Christmas.

Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg return as Brad and Dusty, now enjoying a weird kind of bromance, and the focus of the film swaps from their enjoyable warring and developing relationship to the boring one of them getting along nicely as co-daddies and how they deal with the stupid antics of their intrusive fathers during the holidays.

Mel Gibson and John Lithgow are stuck with the tough task of playing Brad and Dusty’s fathers (though Gibson at 61 is only 15 years older than Wahlberg). Gibson snarls and growls as the unwelcome, sexist, homophobic, gun-toting El Padre, a man who has abandoned his son for several years in favour of swinging with the ladies, and turns up unexpectedly this Christmas for reasons only known to the script-writers (Sean Anders and John Morris). I can’t say it is fun to watch a grizzled Gibson do this, but he is at least brisk and professional.

Lithgow has a horrible role of over-loving, over-sharing parent to Ferrell’s Brad. He has all the silly and slapstick stuff to do, with lots of idiotic falling over, kissing Brad on the mouth, being hit by stuff, etc, etc. Lithgow’s a brilliantly funny and clever man, as Third Rock from the Sun showed. But this taxes all his skills and ingenuity to the max. However, he is at least in there working for it, trying to make it work.

A decade ago Wahlberg was settling in to be a special actor. He was a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee for The Departed (2006). Here, cast in a frivolous sequel, he is coasting and just phoning it in. Ferrell is hardly more engaged, a little bit, but not much more. It’s like the two of them got together and agreed, oh darn it, let’s just let Gibson and Lithgow get on with it, let them do all the work, and we’ll take the money and run.

Linda Cardellini is back as mom, with more to do but a little more strident this time, John Cena is back as Roger, though his promised larger role hasn’t materialised. Thomas Haden Church, funny in part one, has disappeared.

Yes, it intends to be silly and ridiculous, and succeeds, but why is that a good thing? There’s a horrible hint of a Daddy’s Home 3 set at Easter at the end. Nooooooooooooooo!

I didn’t laugh once but I have to admit some the rest of the audience was laughing right along, and the more slapstick it was, the more they laughed. Did I mention the ghastly ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ climax to the movie? No, I don’t think so. Bah, humbug!

Lithgow is 6′ 4″, Ferrell is 6′ 3″, Gibson is 5′ 9″ and Wahlberg is 5′ 8″. You kind of wouldn’t want mess with any of them, though. They are a formidable crew.

Treading a difficult line, it tries to be a family comedy, but also a bit adult, so there is a 12A or PG-13 certificate for suggestive material and some language.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com

Like father, like son: Will Ferrell as Brad and John Lithgow as Don.