Daddy's Home

Will Ferrell's career in comedy has been a somewhat strange one. He's more than capable of working a more serious angle, as evidenced by Stranger Than Fiction from a few years back, but seems to star more often in broad humour comedies like Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues and the genuinely offensive Get Hard. That said, when he has a decent script in front of him, he's more than capable of delivering. So it goes with Daddy's Home.

Ferrell reteams with his Other Guys co-star, Mark Wahlberg, with the two facing off against one another in a battle of wits. Ferrell is happily married to an under-utilised Linda Cardellini who has two children from a previous marriage to Mark Wahlberg. The kids, a boy and a girl, aren't exactly warming to Ferrell's wholesome and beige mannerisms and persona so when the freewheeling, all-American badass Wahlberg flies into town on a whim, he begins to reassert himself in their lives. At first, Ferrell's character tries to allow Wahlberg his space and shuns confronting him, however his co-workers, including a scene-stealing Thomas Haden Church, convince him to step it up and take him on.

For the most part, Wahlberg and Ferrell work well together. The film's humour is broad and easily accessible and doesn't necessarily rely on gross-out moments or improvisation. Instead, the comedy's cleanly scripted and shot in a meticulous way that makes it zip through its 96-minute runtime with relative ease. The real stars of the show, however, are Thomas Haden Church and Hannibal Buress, who play supporting characters to Ferrell and Wahlberg respectively. In both cases, they steal whatever scene they're in right out from the main stars that you almost find yourself wishing for them to come back whenever they're off-screen.

The script plays exactly as you'd expect, with Ferrell and Wahlberg's rivalry escalating with each setpiece in the film, becoming more and more cartoonish with each passing one. It's only when Ferrell's character drops the naive, uptight persona and goes for the jugular that Ferrell himself comes into his own. For the most part, Daddy's Home is a perfectly fine comedy that ambles along at a decent pace, but won't exactly stick in your memory for too long. If you're looking for a reasonably family-friendly comedy and you've already seen Star Wars or In The Heart Of The Sea, you can't go too wrong here.