Gibson saps the joy from this festive farce
Daddy’s Home 2
12A cert, 100 min
★★★★★
Dir Sean Anders Starring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Mel Gibson, John Lithgow, Linda Cardellini, John Cena
Daddy’s Home 2 is your average bumptious Yuletide farce if it were gatecrashed by Satan, and not in a joyful way. Mel Gibson, newly added to the cast as Mark Wahlberg’s gross, leering dad, is playing a censored version of himself, not so much here to air his dirty laundry as show up in new-bought clothes and shoot for some laughs. The trouble is, his attempts at winking, aren’t-i-a-hoot rehabilitation eat away at the film like dry rot, turning everything around him to dust.
It’s not possible to laugh at Gibson, and certainly not with him, which the film frequently intends we should. Weapons-grade family bonding is going on all around, even between Wahlberg’s macho dad and the beta-male stepdad (Will Ferrell) with whom he now cutely shares his children. John Lithgow, as Ferrell’s misty-eyed drip of a Pop, adds to the intentional overload of schmaltz. The movie comes on strong by satirising all this new-man hugging and 21st century compromise, rolling its eyes at the ick factor.
But then it cuts to Gibson doing the same, and the grisly feeling of being forcibly allied with him is an absolute fun-killer. Just as the best stand-up routine in the world might lose you if Kim Jong-un were sniggering in the adjacent seat, it’s a basic rule of entertainment, seemingly ungrasped here, that when Mel Gibson is laughing at something, you are probably not. It’s a shame the film has made this particular rod for its back, because there’s some stuff that might otherwise get a pass. The speccy, funny Owen Vaccaro is a good find as the youngest kid, very much his stepdad’s son and therefore humiliatingly poor at ten-pin bowling. Ferrell’s first advice when he approaches a girl is to ask about her problems and nestle firmly in the friend zone, where generations of Whitakers before him have learned to wait and thrive.
This is the kind of average routine turned to gold by Ferrell’s underselling – that tragic edge of dismay he projects at not getting better material, which he then turns in itself to comedy. Lithgow is a definite plus, too, boring his grandchildren to tears with chatter and devotion, and never far out of earshot with that trilling, protesting voice of his.
The aroma of weirdness, though, gradually swamps everything. It’s all a little too much what Jingle Bells might sound like in hell. TR