‘DADDY’S’ home for the holidays
“Daddy’s Home 2” reunites “co-daddies” Brad Whitaker (Will Ferrell), a sensitive, girlie man liable to tear up at any moment, and vulgar, macho tough guy Dusty Mayron (Mark Wahlberg), as well as Brad’s level-headed wife, Sara (the always welcome Linda Cardellini), who is Dusty’s ex-wife, with director and cowriter Sean Anders (“We’re the Millers”) for another blended families misadventure. And the results are not nearly as painful as expected in spite of opening scenes featuring trademark Ferrell pratfalls.
The holiday-season-ready premise of “Daddy’s Home 2” is what happens when the two men’s fathers, Brad’s even more sensitive, retired mail carrier dad, Don Whitaker (John Lithgow), who likes improv and kissing his adult son on the lips a beat longer than you’d like, and Dusty’s estranged and even more macho dad, Kurt Mayron (yes, Mel Gibson), a former space shuttle commander, show up for Christmas a week before the actual event.
Dusty is married to the beautiful and exotic Karen (Victoria’s Secret model Alessandra Ambrosio), who writes novels based on her life experiences and always takes notes. Dusty and Karen and Brad and Sara share custody of Dusty’s and Sara’s kids, Dylan (Owen Vaccaro) and Megan (Scarlett Estevez) from the first film, and Brad and Sara now have an infant of their own. Dusty is also stepfather to Karen’s tweener daughter Adrianna (Didi Costine).
After a school Christmas pageant, Brad and Dusty go to the airport to pick up their respective fathers. Since Adrianna has publicly expressed a distaste for separate family events, Brad and Dusty agree upon a “together Christmas.” After arguing about which house to have it in, Kurt solves the dilemma by booking the two families in a palatial log cabin in the mountains.
As usual in Hollywood films of this kind, money is never an object. In one admittedly funny sequence, Brad cuts down a prospective Christmas tree only to have a cellphone tower fall on him and a $20,000 bill to pay. At around the same time, Kurt buys Megan a shotgun, and she happily shoots two turkeys after winging Grandpa, aka “El Padre.”
Ferrell, the comic master of this class, carries the heaviest load in the film, as he should and successfully trots out his bag of tricks, including the pratfalls and inappropriate, neurotic and manic behavior. Lithgow is also a gifted comic actor, although playing the secretive, softhearted Don is this film’s not-so-secret thankless task.
Gibson, who makes his entrance to AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” plays a character so close to his purported real self, a mercurial, hard-drinking ladies’ man with an irresistible urge to tell a joke about “two dead hookers” or say exactly what he thinks, however “politically incorrect” (or in Gibson’s case, however anti-Semitic or racist), that you sit there waiting for Kurt to just go off, which I admit is kind of fun.
Along with 2010’s “The Other Guys,” this is the third comic pairing of apparent bros Ferrell and Wahlberg. In concluding scenes once again featuring West Newbury’s John Cena, “Daddy’s Home 2” closes to the tune of the Bob Geldof-Midge Ure standard “Do They Know It’s Christmas.” Like a lot of comic directors, Anders throws a ton of funny bits at the wall to see what sticks. Quite a lot does.