The House * (2017, Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler, Ryan Simpkins, Jason Mantzoukas, Nick Kroll, Jeremy Renner) – Movie Review 

Will Ferrell (6′ 3″) and Amy Poehler (5′ 2″) star as loving but dizzy middle aged married couple Scott and Kate Johansen, who desperately need to find the cash when their daughter Alex (Ryan Simpkins) gets in to college and the town administration withdraws its grant.

In fact (well, it’s not a fact it’s a fiction – thanks goodness this isn’t ‘based on a true story’), they are so desperate they are willing to talk their stupid neighbour Frank (Jason Mantzoukas) into using his house as a casino, so they can clean up with dirty money. Frank’s wife has conveniently walked out of home, taking most of their stuff, so the house is conveniently empty.

Also Frank is a gambler, having gambled away their money, and he needs cash to pay back the money he owes and get the wife back too. So the Johansens and Frank become partners in crime – running an illegal casino, getting clients to park their cars at the neighbouring mall car park, and coming in through the back way, via the garden. 

The unusual, maybe even unique premise is fine, well set up and elaborately devised, but developing it into a laugh riot is something else. The eventual plot borrows a bit from Martin Scorsese’s Casino in its increasingly desperate search for laughs, and throws in anything else it knows or can come up with in the way of often irrelevant scenes and gags to try to fill the short 85-minute running time.

Clearly up against it, Ferrell and Poehler turns comedic cartwheels to try to raise laughs, and the be fair they quite often do, especially earlier in the movie. They are well cast as husband and wife. It is the one thing you really believe in about this movie. Nothing else seems remotely convincing or real. No one would ever, ever, ever do anything we see in this movie in real life, not even in America.

But, anyway, Ferrell and Poehler are fine, always welcome, funny people. That cannot be said for any of the supporting players, at least on this form in this film. Mantzoukas has an awful lot to do, and he’s one big bore.

Nick Kroll is not funny as the small town boss, though maybe he could have been if the script and his role were decent. Michaela Watkins is no good as his separated wife, though her role is charmless and strident, and she plays it exactly as written. Rob Huebel doesn’t get any laughs as Police Officer Chandler, apparently the town’s only cop, though his underplaying of it is merciful considering some of the rough comedy acting round him. Jessie Ennis is ghastly as Rachel, and ditto Lennon Parham as Martha. Jeremy Renner is shockingly bad as Mob boss Tommy, who comes to sort the casino and its operators out when the police can’t. Why did they cast Renner when somebody funny is required?

All these performers, and others, are in the shade of the two stars, making what might have been an ensemble comedy into a star vehicle. The trouble is, though Ferrell and Poehler are fine, they stretch their welcome to near breaking point. It is so easy to get boring trying to be funny.

The main culprit was be co-writer/ director Andrew Jay Cohen, along with his co-writer Brendan O’Brien. Apart from the torture sequence in the garage and the setting fire to the Mob boss villain scene, it is harmless, though those scenes leave a bad taste in the mouth and sets you against the film and its performers.

The self-indulgent out-takes at the closing credits aren’t really at all funny and not worth staying for.

It is an R rated comedy – a UK 15 – with strong language, sexual references, drug use, violence and nudity.

The film was preceded by a trailer for Ferrell’s new comedy, Daddy’s Home 2, which, with Mel Gibson aboard, looks desperately unfunny.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review 

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