Playdate Review: Alan Ritchson and Kevin James are a reluctant buddy duo in this action comedy
Plot: Brian has just been fired from his job. He becomes a stay-at-home dad. He accepts a playdate invitation from another stay-at-home dad who turns out to be a loose cannon.
Review: I am a sucker for a good buddy comedy. The genre was once a staple of movies for years, with a glut of low-budget outings throughout the 1990s oversaturating the market. In recent years, we have seen a few decent entries, such as Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart in Central Intelligence and Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg in The Other Guys. The pairing of a comedian with an action hero often makes for the most fun, but it hinges on the chemistry between the leads. The new Prime Video movie Playdate tries to capture that dynamic by partnering comedian Kevin James with Reacher star Alan Ritchson. The result is a familiar mix of fights and laughs that doesn’t deliver anything new, but does showcase Ritchson’s talent for comedy. Playdate is not going to blow anyone away, but it is a fun and lightweight action comedy.
Playdate opens with Brian Jennings (Kevin James), a forensic accountant, coaching his stepson’s lacrosse team. Brian’s wife, Emily (Sarah Chalke), wants to help Brian bond with Lucas (from The Life of Chuck‘s Benjamin Pajak), who prefers dancing to sports and often gets bullied. Brian himself has experience with people treating him poorly and takes Lucas under his wing. One day at the park, the pair runs into Jeff Eamon (Alan Ritchson) and his son, CJ (Banks Pierce). Jeff is an army veteran and a physically imposing presence with a sweet demeanor. Jeff and CJ invite Brian and Lucas over for a playdate when a crew of mercenaries comes after them. After a brutal fight and car chase, Jeff and Brian go on the run with their kids as they try to escape the armed thugs on their trail. Jeff admits the truth to Brian that CJ is not his son but a kid he rescued, and the reluctant friends must figure out a way to clear their names and stop the bad guys on their trail. This includes some plot twists that may not be expected from a movie like this, but they also give Playdate a bit of distinction in a fairly formulaic film.
At a brisk ninety-three minutes, Playdate doesn’t slow down much once it gets moving. At first, the awkward dynamic between Kevin James and Alan Ritchson evolves into a fun pairing that reminds me quite a bit of Kevin Hart and Dwayne Johnson. Kevin James gets some funny moments to mug for the camera, but is mainly the straight man opposite Ritchson. Ritchson has showcased a brooding and towering presence in the series Reacher, as well as in the films The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, and will soon be seen in a dialogue-free turn in Motor City. While Ritchson has had some funny moments here and there, he gets to cut loose with a fully comedic role in this movie that caught me by surprise. Ritchson plays Jeff as a great soldier with a good heart, despite not being the most intelligent person. Instead of playing the doofus as an act to befriend Brian, Jeff truly is a bit of a dumbass who likes to reference movies in equal measure with dispatching enemies with ease. While physically skilled, Ritchson gives Jeff a fun and sweet quality that makes him fun to watch, while Kevin James takes a backseat to his co-star.
Because this movie is a vehicle for Alan Ritchson, followed by Kevin James, most of the supporting cast feels like an ensemble of glorified cameos. Child actors Benjamin Pajak and Banks Pierce get the most screen time aside from Ritchson and James and get some fun moments with their adult co-stars, but everyone else gets minimal time, including the villains. Stephen Root and Paul Walter Hauser each get one or two scenes with Sarah Chalke, existing mainly to deliver a somewhat blatant product placement. Isla Fisher is given an unnecessary role as a mean mom character who serves no purpose to the plot. Alan Tudyk appears as a Steve Jobs-esque tech mogul and doesn’t even get to do what he does best: mug for the camera. Hiro Kanagawa makes an appearance as Colonel Kurtz, whose name is more significant than his role. Everyone in the cast is okay, but they’re all pale compared to the father-son duos at the forefront of Playdate.
Neil Goldman wrote Playdate and pulls on his resume of comedy writing, having worked on Community, Scrubs, Superior Donuts, and Family Guy. Like Family Guy, Playdate is rife with references to movies and pop culture that start as fun but eventually start to wear thin. Director Luke Greenfield, best known for helming Rob Schneider’s The Animal and The Girl Next Door, has limited experience with large-scale action sequences, outside of his 2014 movie Let’s Be Cops. He does his best to imbue Playdate with energy, but the frenetic editing borders on headache-inducing, with a couple of sequences boasting edits every couple of seconds. The special effects are minimal here, with most of the action taking the form of hand-to-hand combat and car chases; however, when CGI is required, it appears incredibly cheap. Greenfield tries his best to give this movie a scale bigger than it has, but this may be the cheapest-looking Prime Video original film with this caliber of cast.
Playdate is not a good movie, but it is a lot more fun than I expected. Alan Ritchson had me cracking up through the entire film and showed he has the chops to lead far better comedies than this. Kevin James could have done more, as could most of the supporting cast, but everyone was at the mercy of a weak and rote script that rehashes every trope of the buddy comedy subgenre. Still, with a surprising twist to the plot I did not see coming, Playdate is strangely enjoyable for a casual watch that will likely be remembered as a showcase for Ritchson’s range as a performer, rather than much else.
Playdate premieres on November 12th on Prime Video.
Source:
JoBlo.com
