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Daddy's Home 2

(Sean Anders)




Inspired casting of the grandparents isn't enough to save this by the numbers comedy sequel with bad humour. Despite the comedy chemistry that both Wahlberg and Ferrell have, Daddy's Home 2 fails to fuel that bond, which was evident in the original and even better in The Other Guys. This is a money grabbing sequel that knew it wasn't going to be good, so they tried to wrangle in the "holiday" crowd by having it take place at Christmas. We saw a similar thing happen with Bad Moms 2.

Brad and Dusty are finally friends and are co-dadding this whole thing up perfectly. Then things take an unexpected turn when Dusty's father Kurt comes in for the holidays. They have a strenuous relationship, the total opposite of touchy-feely Brad and his father, Don. In an effort to win over his grandchildren and upstage Don, Kurt rents a chateau for the holidays. Unfortunately not everyone is jolly and the small cracks in the relationship between Brad and Dusty begin to widen as Kurt exploits it.

It's been awhile since we've seen Gibson in a comedy and it shows. He is pretty stiff here, trying to mix his bad guy persona with the comedy styling of today, which he is not known for. It makes for an awkward performance that seems kind of out of place. He even picked up a RAZZIE for his performance here. On the other hand you have Lithgow, who perfectly fits in with Ferrell and their relationship is spot on. The cast as a whole is talented enough, but they are not given a chance to transform the material into something funny. Instead we are given bits that are as old as time itself (dad / thermostat jokes that were funny when Family Guy did it).

Poor Linda Cardellini, given even less to do now than she had in the original. Her whole arc here is to be jealous of Wahlberg's new girl and there is so little time dedicated to her that sometimes I forgot she was in the film. John Cena has been carving out a decent comedy career, but everything he does here falls incredibly short. That sums up the film for me, it falls short in a lot of areas, mainly the laughs. For a comedy, that's a death sentence.