2015’s Daddy’s Home hardly set the world alight, but it was a perfectly serviceable comedy which traded well on the highly strung whimsy of Will Ferrell (as mild-mannered Brad) and the alpha male charisma of Mark Wahlberg (as non-mannered Dusty). This follow-up, meanwhile, has the whiff of Studio Mandated Sequel about it: an empty shrug of will-this-do improv-gags combined with thoughtless sexual politics, all somehow making it seem more outdated than the original.
As with many an inferior sequel before it, Daddy’s Home 2 hopes to up the ante by upping the cast list, adding John Lithgow and Mel Gibson to the ensemble as the respective daddies of the original daddies. Like father, like son, it follows that like original, like sequel, and indeed, most of the same fundamental jokes are repeated here (Ferrell is a softy, Wahlberg isn’t), as is the fundamental plot (conflict arises over reductive masculinity tropes).
Areas are mined joylessly, until there’s nothing left in the comedy quarry.
As ‘Paw-Paw’ Don, Lithgow is even more of a softy than Brad, the kind of dad unafraid to affectionately kiss his adult son on the lips or hug a problem out. Lithgow’s patented brand of ebullient male-in-crisis is always worth a punt, and well-cast against Ferrell; his melancholy at the crumbling of his marriage amounts to the film’s few moments of pathos.
Gibson, on the other hand, is even more of a one-dimensional toxic manchild than Wahlberg. His character Kurt is a retired astronaut, though the film seems to view this as a profession for jocks and chauvinists, not physics PhDs and humanists. Whatever your view on the recent Melaissance, comedy is hardly his strong suit anymore — especially not when it involves jokes about dead hookers, non-consensual kissing, or doling out a “big slap on the caboose”. If it’s meant as an uncomfortable ribbing of his scandal-hit past, it feels utterly tone-deaf to the current climate.
This is not the film to make droll, considered comments on shifting sociocultural norms. This is a film which grabs hungrily and flailingly for the low-hanging comedy fruit. Parents love to take photos of their kids! Dads are really sensitive about the thermostat temperature! Will Ferrell often falls over! All these areas are mined joylessly, until there’s nothing left in the comedy quarry.
Elsewhere, there’s a perfunctory subplot where Linda Cardellini’s largely ignored wife is jealous of another largely ignored wife, played by Alessandra Ambrosio. But the film seldom lets us forget that this is primarily a man’s story, told by men, about men fumbling their way towards some sort of obvious realisation. And when that personal growth finally arrives, it feels horribly unearned, leveraged by a sprinkling of standard-issue Christmas miracles. Your realisation about Daddy’s Home 2, meanwhile, is likely to come a lot sooner than that.
