Stream It Or Skip It?

Those who find John Cena comedy vehicles too sophisticated in their literary ambitions may want to plunge the Amazon Prime Video sewer pipe for Playdate, a mismatched-buddy yukfest starring Kevin James and Reacher star Alan Ritchson. This is one of those movies, and I’m going to stop the sentence right here. It’s just one of those movies. It’s directed by the guy who made The Animal and, um, Let’s Be Cops, and makes one yearn for the halcyon days of James-headlined phlix like Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Zookeeper, when people left the house to watch unapologetically stupid movies instead of sitting at home and letting streaming detritus like this murmur in the background while you scoop doodoo out of the cat box. Normally, I’d old-man-shouts-at-cloud about most every movie deserving a big theatrical presentation, but Playdate is the rare case where the smaller the screen, the better. Ideally, subatomic.

PLAYDATE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Brian (James) is stuck with a stepson who prefers to post his dance-selfie videos on “Dik Dok” – please laugh – than play lacrosse. I mean, you put the helmet on the kid and he immediately starts tripping over the lines on the grass. And for that reason, little Lucas (Benjamin Pajak) is a target for bullies, because it’s apparently still 1991 in this alternate reality where people have smartphones. No modern kid likes to watch dance videos! That must mean he’s GAY or something, right?!? Things only get more parentally awkward for Brian The Forensic Accountant, because he gets fired by his finance-bro bosses for not committing fraud, and that means his wife Emily (Sarah Chalke) will go back to work and he’ll be the stay-at-home dad who doesn’t seem to realize that children have to eat food. He suggests Lucas try “intermittent fasting,” a rare reference that actually seems of this century.

Not content to be a decent parent who intends to meet Lucas on his own terms, Brian decides they need to go to the park so he can force the kid to have fun with a football. There, Brian meets the Mama Mafia, led by the vicious Leslie (Isla Fisher, who gets about three scenes before her character is apparently killed?). He’s terrified, and therefore is more open to hanging with Jeff (Ritchson) and his kid CJ (Banks Pierce), who wing footballs at each other at about 98 mph like REAL MEN. Jeff is a bit overbearing and Brian is a little put-off by it – Brian doesn’t really like the guy and he kinda doesn’t like his kid and definitely doesn’t like the Mama Mafia or his former co-workers, and probably doesn’t like anybody at all, especially himself – but he lets himself be swept away by this high-energy guy who calls him “Bri-Bri” and looks like he sprinkles steroids on top of his Cheerios instead of sugar. 

Wait, I shouldn’t mention Cheerios. That’s not one of the products placed in this movie, and you’ll quite clearly grok which products those are, since their logos might be the only things here that are competently photographed. No, this movie has a pact to mention and/or prominently display specific brands of peanut butter, dinner rolls, sodas and makes and models of minivans. There are so many minivan jokes in this movie. Dozens, it seems like. And to think, if you’re not ponying up the extra few bucks a month on top of your Prime memberships, this movie was preceded by commercials, but never, ever interrupted by them! To quote Leo in One Battle After Another: “Life! LIIIIIFFFEEEE!”

Where was I? Right: The part where we learn that Jeff is a former military guy who suddenly has toughs jumping out of black SUVs, shooting at him. Did I mention that CJ is such a manly kid he can leap into the air and flying-Superman-punch bad guys into dreamland, in contrast to little wussy Lucas? The violence begins with an incomprehensible car chase, continues at a kiddie funcenter rife with plushie mascots waiting to get socked and kicked, and spills over into generic warehouses and scenes featuring bit-part paycheckers Alan Tudyk, Stephen Root and Paul Walter Hauser. Are we laughing yet? No. No we are not!

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Playdate thinks it’s super clever by blatantly referencing Thelma and Louise, The Departed, The Silence of the Lambs, Apocalypse Now, Reservoir Dogs and 25-year-old Chili’s commercials. That’s the trick – getting the movie title in the same sentence with a bunch of classics, and I fell right into that pit of spikes. (Please be kind when you eulogize me.) In reality, Playdate has more in common with utter crapola like Daddy’s Home, Daddy’s Home 2, The Family Plan, probably The Family Plan 2 (why are all these Mark Wahlberg movies?), Back in Action and Happy Madison putrescences like Grown Ups and a variety of deeply upsetting David Spade and Rob Schneider vehicles.

Performance Worth Watching: Nope.

Memorable Dialogue: Brian gets the stinkeye from a funcenter employee: 

Brian: Do I look like a predator?

Employee: Yeah.

Brian: Is it the windbreaker?

Employee: Yeah.

Sex and Skin: Also nope.

Our Take: Playdate is a nasty piece of work. The references are aimed at 48-year-olds, but the comedy is aimed at seven-year-olds, and the violence is a bit over-the-top brutal for anyone under 10. The guy who directed The Animal and Let’s Be Cops crafts action sequences out of snippets of footage in which he thrashes around the camera in lieu of the things in front of it actually moving, then using a dried-out glue stick to piece the bits together and praying they don’t fall apart when the film’s run through the projector. Yes, that’s a joke. It’s not a good one. It’s hacky. Streaming movies don’t run through film projectors! God! Maybe I should write my own piece of shit movie like this one, but one thing I wouldn’t do is put product placement in the outtakes (snack chips and salsa) that run during the end credits. I have standards; Playdate does not. 

The movie’s primary tone is “obnoxious.” The dialogue is roughly one-quarter exposition that assumes we have the comprehension skills of a gerbil, three-quarters casually naughty nonsense about zapping perverts in the ballsack or being called “a baby back bitch.” Almost all of it is yelled at 98db. I turned down the volume to a nigh-imperceptible level and it still seemed loud. Ritchson throws himself into the film with an eff-it-might-as-well-get-really-dirty gregariousness the movie doesn’t deserve, perhaps to compensate for James’ been-here-before listlessness. It finds things like waterboarding and kids hopped up on energy drinks high-larious. It barely bothers with basic functionary components of filmmaking such as editing, cinematography and plotting – you know, things that make a movie comprehensible. Playdate makes the bottom of the barrel look like Everest.

Our Call: Playdate? More like Playfellate, because it sucks. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.