Daddy’s Home, Review: The Ex factor

A sensitive, sentimental true story goes through Hollywood’s spin doctors and comes out with a load of slap-stick comedy, a few sharply contrasting stereo-types, and some above the PG-13 certification content. If you can detach yourself from identifying with a well-intentioned hubby who goes crazy when faced with the prospect of losing his nuclear family, you can enjoy several laugh-out-loud moments. If you stay with the plot, however, these laughs might arouse guilt and the sequences could even appear silly.

Mild-mannered and sentimental FM radio station executive Brad (Will Ferrell) Whitaker has been married to a divorcée Sara's (Linda Cardellini) for eight months. He struggles to be a good stepfather to his wife’s two children, Megan and Dylan. This effort is strengthened by the initial diagnosis that Brad cannot become a father himself. The children begin to grow closer to Brad, with Dylan confiding in him that he is being bullied by older, fourth-graders, and Megan asking him to take her to the upcoming father/daughter dance at her school. One night, the kids’ biological father Dusty (Mark Wahlberg) calls her, and learns accidentally that Sara has remarried. He tells Brad that he will be visiting the very next day. Sara is apprehensive about her ex-husband visiting in their home, given his aggressive and irresponsible behavior that led to their separation in the first place, but Brad convinces her that it is important for the kids that their father and stepfather establish mature contact with each other.

Brad realises his mistake when it becomes clear that Dusty intends to drive Brad out of his kids’ lives, and reconcile with Sara. Dusty gets the kids a dog, finishes a tree-house that Brad wanted to build and attempts to drive a wedge between Brad and Sara by taking them to a nationally acclaimed fertility doctor (Bobby Cannavale), hoping that reconfirmation of his impotency will send Sara into Dusty's arms. To his surprise, the results show that there is a very good chance of Brad fathering a child.

The film is not to be confused with Daddy's Home (2014, a TV Movie), though a few elements are similar. Incidentally, the title can be read either way: Daddy is Home or Daddy’s Home (home of Daddy). So, a full spelling would have been disambiguous.

Brian Burns (You Stupid Man) conceived the idea in 2008, when he and his wife Kelly Turlington were in the same situation that Brad and Sara are in the film, and he was a step-father to two children, aged 9 and 6. He says Ferrell captured the role perfectly, even taking on some of his own mannerisms and personal style.           One night, he says, “I was tucking my step-daughter Cameron into bed. She asked me: Now that you and mom are married, who’s going to take me to the daddy-daughter dance?” That scene became the center-piece of the story, and remains so, in the screen version.

Director Sean Anders and his old, faithful writing partner John Morris (Horrible Bosses 2, She's Out of My League, Dumb and Dumber, Sex Drive) worked out the screenplay. In the script, Brad sinks from a lovable, upright man, to a loser driven to extremes. His boss Leo (Thomas Haden Church), the black, skilled worker (Hannibal Buress) and the doctor are stereo-types who mouth some really funny one-liners. Leo’s ludicrous anecdotes are really hilarious. Brad’s bordering on insanity bravado and Dusty’s mean-machine machinations are too over-the-top to remain credible. Dogs peeing and ……is overdone too.

Director Sean Anders (She’s Out of My League, Horrible Bosses 2, Sex Drive) has the lead male duo from The Other Guys, a comedy in which Wahlberg and Ferrell played detectives and exhibited high-grade chemistry. This time, the chemistry is a bit low-grade. With so many over, under and stereo-typical characters around, Anders manages to give us one almost real person: Sara. Also, he manages to integrate tracks by Metallica, AC/DC and Guns and Roses as character-building music. His approach to comedy, sometimes, employs sadistic incidents and banana-skin trips as generic guffaw-getters. Two really well-executed scenes are the Radio Panda audition and the father-daughter dance-party.

Will Ferrell (The Lego Movie, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, The Other Guys) is very old school and slightly affected. It’s not his fault that he is sometimes seen as a moron and a jerk. Ferrell’s by-the-book persona is sharply contrasted with the living-on-the-edge, unscrupulous and manipulative Mark Wahlberg (Mojave, Transformers: Age of Extinction, The Other Guys, The Departed). Wahlberg gets to show his torso and flex his muscles more than once. His dead-pan approach to acting comes close to lack of interest, though he does, somehow, hold his own. Linda Cardellini’s Italian surname comes from her paternal grandfather. She is part Irish (from her mother) and also has German, English, and Scottish blood. Her films include Legally Blonde, Scooby Doo and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Talented and good-looking, she does a good job as a woman caught between an ex-husband, present husband and two school-going children.

Thomas Haden Church (George of the Jungle, Sideways, Spiderman 3) began his career as a radio deejay and then as a voice-over announcer. Curiously, he plays the boss of a Radio Station that is auditioning talent for voicing the signature tune. Imposing and warm at the same time, his is a part looks incredible from down here, but who knows? might not be so incredible in the US of A. It was difficult to decipher what the two children--Scarlett Estevez and Owen Vaccaro--say, for they speak fast and in heavy accents. Bobby Cannavale has little to do and his acting abilities are not challenged. Hannibal Buress too has a heavy accent, but some of his one-liners do come through.

Daddy’s Home has to be seen in the context of societal norms and the staggering number of remarriages and step-children that are part of American society. It is by no means great cinema, but surely not as bad as it appears if you go to watch it unprepared.

Rating: **1/2

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arhMMJx7tCU

Daddy's Home (2014, TV movie)

With a young daughter, two baby mamas, and his own mama breathing down his neck, Ronald "R.C." Carr (Travis Winfrey) has got more ladies in his life than he can handle! He's one hit song away from fame and fortune as a music producer, but he can't seem to find the rhythm that makes him a good, reliable father. Between his love interests (Caryn Ward and Chyna Layne) scheming to get him to settle down and his unresolved issues with his own father, R.C. has got some growing up to do. It'll take finding the right harmony of love and forgiveness to be a real man and a true father.