DVD Reviews
DADDY’S HOME
(out of 4) This marks a step up from The Other Guys, the previous comic teaming of Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. There’s welcome absurdity in formula yuks: Ferrell’s stepdad character Brad competes with Wahlberg’s biodad Dusty for the affection of the latter’s two young children. (Linda Cardellini has the thankless role of Sarah, wife of Brad and mother of Dusty’s kids.)
Meek but reliable Brad is an executive at a soft-jazz radio station called the Panda. Macho and reckless Dusty rides a motorcycle and enters to the rock swagger of AC/ DC’s “Thunderstruck.”
Director/co-writer Sean Anders ( Meet the Millers) sets the controls but also twists them: Thomas Haden Church as Brad’s nutty boss and Hannibal Buress as a meddling handyman keep things on the happy side of quirky.
So does the nightly bedtime story slam between stepdad and biodad, plus a third act that brings it all back home for laughs and life lessons.
Extras include deleted and extended scenes and making-of featurettes. HUMAN HIGHWAY
(out of 4) The characters are dorks, the script is a joke and the special effects are as cheesy as radioactive cheddar in Human Highway, Neil Young’s 1982 apocalyptic satire, now available in a no-frills director’s cut Blu-ray.
The 80-minute film plays like an episode of Corner Gas as directed by David Lynch, whose Twin Peaks TV series would later use two of writer/ director Young’s cast members: Russ Tamblyn and Charlotte Stewart.
This “nuclear comedy” is set in a remote hick town called Linear Valley, which is dangerously close to an ominously glowing nuclear plant. Writer/director Young stars as bucktoothed and bespectacled auto mechanic Lionel Switch, who lives a life of carefree ignorance, even though his pal Fred (Tamblyn) mentions to him the deadly effects of radiation.
Daddy’s Home
All anybody cares about are plans by money-grubbing diner and gas bar owner Otto (co-director Dean Stockwell) to jack up prices and reduce food portions. The chef is played by the late Dennis Hopper.
Little does anybody suspect, but Linear Valley may not be around for much longer. At one point, Lionel adopts a rock-star pose and jams with New Wave band Devo on Young’s “Hey Hey, My My (Into The Black).” There are a few other songs in the film, but Human Highway couldn’t really be described as a musical. It’s more of a head trip. Reviews by Peter Howell