I didn’t think we needed another Daddy’s Home movie. But Hollywood, being the morally void clique that it is, felt it necessary to squeeze every last bit of nutrient from the carcass left over from the first one. Still, since when has quality stopped flocks of people from watching another Will Ferrell and gang bore fest?
Brad and Dusty (Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg), having made their fragile father stepfather relationship work, now have to try and introduce their own fathers to the greater family and, like Brad and Dusty, they have to try and make their incompatible personalities work.
This isn’t that interesting, so they try to fill the interest leak with a Mel Gibson sized wedge. Mel Gibson recently said he’s “surprised” he still has a career and I don’t know if he’s trying to get rid of it here but he’s playing on thin ice.
In fact, the entire cast is dull. Perhaps not entirely through any fault of their own, the content is dire, but there’s a sense nobody minds that the film is crap. Will Ferrell plays Will Ferrell and he gets the most laughs, if only they’re because his silly faces remind you of good films gone by. The gags are forced and predictable, so dry moments are glazed over with cheap, unimaginative slapstick that they repeat as if it were funny the first time.
The film unravelled with painful predictability but it’s no surprise in an era of Hollywood comedy that is just going through the motions, releasing crappy comedies with great ensemble casts to guaranteed profit.
The only positive I can take from Daddy’s Home 2 is that for every year Will Ferrell gets older and his charm is replaced with wrinkles, he gets closer to retirement and can stop tarnishing the legacy of his Christmas masterpiece, Elf.