Daddy's Home

Ever since seeing them together in The Other Guys I have been hoping for another collaboration between Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. The two bring a wonderful balance in comedy with Ferrell as the clean cut half of Wahlberg’s more extreme attitude. Daddy’s Home sounds great on paper but unfortunately isn’t the kind of collaboration I was hoping.

Brad (Will Ferrell) is the perfect step-father to his wife Sarah’s (Linda Cardellini) kids despite them not yet coming around to him being a part of the family. The situation is further complicated when their biological father, Dusty (Mark Wahlberg), comes home from doing awesome things traveling abroad. Dusty, believing Brad to be encroaching on his family, does whatever he can to show his kids that he’s the more fun father.

I’m not quite sure where everything went wrong, but Daddy’s Home is one of the unfunniest movies of the year. Maybe it’s because the plot revolves around two grown adults fighting over the love of their children. It’s actually rather sad at times. The majority of the humor revolves around how cool Dusty is and how lame Brad is, and it doesn’t get any more complex than that. There were some laughs with Hannibal Buress’ character, Griff, a handyman who gets fired by Brad but still sticks around the house after becoming friends with Dusty, but those moments are few and far between.

Daddy’s Home feels rushed and unfinished. One of the most random and horribly looking scenes involves Will Ferrell attempting to ride Mark Wahlberg’s motorcycle. He quickly loses control of it and sends it crashing through the house, out the upstairs window, and onto their minivan. It’s one of the most ridiculous scenes in recent memory because of how horrible it looks. I guess good special effects artists weren’t in the budget. I’d sooner believe Wahlberg actually fought against real life Transformers than that motorcycle scene.

The rest of the film is just as messy. There’s little humor to be found (thankfully there’s at least Buress), and the story isn’t at all entertaining. Daddy’s Home is one of the unfortunate cases where the whole is nowhere near as great as the sum of its parts.