Gibson comes home to comedy
Will Ferrell’s new family reunion movie comes with a dose of holiday hijinks – and some extra baggage.
Daddy’s Home 2 centres around his overly earnest character, Brad Whitaker, co-existing with his wife’s rough-and-tough exhusband, Dusty Mayron (played by Mark Wahlberg), until drama ensues when their respective fathers come to town for Christmas.
The film features a controversial cast addition in Mel Gibson, starring in his first family comedy in more than a decade after his infamous 2006 drunkdriving arrest and anti-Semitic rant, followed by audio of hateful tirades against a former girlfriend that was released four years later.
Gibson, who plays Dusty’s badboy father Kurt in the follow-up, has slowly returned to Hollywood after a lengthy hiatus from mainstream moviemaking. Ferrell believes viewers will embrace seeing the 61-year-old Gibson in a different type of role.
‘‘He’s going to open audiences’ eyes with how great he is in comedy,’’ the Hollywood A-lister says. ‘‘I think this was kind of a fun thing for him to step outside, be on camera after having an absence for a while, and also [doing] a family comedy was something he hasn’t really done,’’ he says
The Daddy’s Home sequel hits cinemas a little under two years after the original, which introduced Ferrell’s character as the goofy, excessively upbeat stepfather to Dusty’s two children.
Ferrell – whose father is played by John Lithgow – didn’t originally anticipate making a sequel but after the success of the first Daddy’s Home, he decided he was on board as long as they came up with a worthwhile storyline featuring the right characters.
‘‘We really wanted to see someone come down the escalator like a Mel Gibson, and without even saying a word of dialogue, you knew, ‘Oh, this is why Dusty acts the way he acts’,’’ Ferrell explains.
The movie is the latest costarring vehicle for Ferrell and Wahlberg, who first delighted audiences as unlikely police partners in the 2009 comedy The Other Guys, before revisiting their odd-couple dynamic in the original Daddy’s Home.
The secret to their rapport, Ferrell believes, stems from their abilities to make their characters feel as real as possible.
‘‘When we first started of thinking of Mark for The Other Guys, it just started making us laugh, the idea of Mark and I together. You wouldn’t ever picture it. Him always playing the tough guy up against my kind of plain, everyman thing I’ve been able to corner the market on.
Although Ferrell plays a father figure in Daddy’s Home 2 ,he acknowledges he’s not as over-thetop around his real kids as his character. The 50-year-old is starting to let 13-year-old son Magnus watch some of the more raunchy comedies he’s starred in, though he still limits what younger sons Mattias, 10, and Axel, 7, can see.
Regardless, the Ferrell kids are fans of their father’s comedy style.
‘‘They love their Family Guy, and they love Adam Sandler. They’re like, ‘You’re good too Dad, you’re good too’. As long as I kind of stay in the top 10 with them, I’ll take it.’’ – TNS
❚ Advanced screenings of Daddy’s Home 2 (M) are in select cinemas this weekend. The film opens nationwide on November
23.