Almost every week we have the same set of circumstances when another comedy comes along this year. It is not marketed correctly or it is close to not being marketed at all. The only thing I knew about this movie was its trailers. My reaction to the trailer to this movie was that I chuckled once or twice and it is shocking because Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler were not only two of the funniest comedians of SNL but two of the funniest comedians right now. Their comedic chops are aggressive and can almost strike a laugh-out-loud reaction. And, boy, this is a low for these two comedians because this movie is basically improvisations and attempts at jokes with an old-fashioned script that seems to go nowhere with its laughs and goes in a predictable route with its main storyline.
Scott and Kate Johansen (Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler) take their daughter, Alex (Ryan Simpkins) around on a campus tour in Bucknell University, her first option. A few weeks later, the family is gathered around Alex's laptop to read a letter from Bucknell University. She is accepted. Scott and Ryan celebrates Alex's acceptance, however, there are financial problems. They later go to a city council meeting to find that the city council's director, Bob Schaeffer (Nick Kroll) is spending the town's money on new city pools and could not back up to support Alex's scholarship. And, also Scott and Alex do not have enough money to apply for a loan and they cannot get raises at their jobs.
Later, Scott, Kate and the couple's porn and gambling-addicted friend, Frank (Jason Mantzoukas), go to a casino but loses their and everybody else's money at the table. Now, Frank is concocting an idea that he, Scott and Kate can start their own casino operation even though it's illegal. Even though they know it's risky, Scott and Kate reluctantly go with it. They bring neighbors and friends who are also down on their luck to get invited into the casino and become addicted to their operation.
I don't know what to say. I am shocked that Ferrell and Poehler were dragged down to not just an old-fashioned comedy about a casino operation but it is a comedy involving gangsters after they accidentally cut up a guy's finger. You mean, that this is real humor? What is going with comedies this year? This has been pathetic retracing back to old-fashioned comedy and trying too hard to go the distance or to push the envelope. Snatched relied too hard on the kidnapping formula, Baywatch had terrible dialogue and jokes, Rough Night had a good execution but madly underestimated its storyline. This movie felt like they had no effort on its storyline and could sole rely on Ferrell and Poehler to save the movie. They do throw in a couple of jokes for chuckles but sometimes, they either drag the joke to boredom or the script drags them to become caricatures of SNL characters.
Ferrell and Poehler do their best but they sleepwalk through their roles. Mantzoukas sort of annoyed me a bit. And, Jeremy Renner has a cameo as a mob boss who threatens to shut the operation down. The comic build-up to the operation with gags of them making fun of the Sopranos or Fight Club is predictable. There's no tension when we reach a ransom when the mob boss kidnaps the daughter. And, the ending is a pointless last joke. Director Andrew J. Cohen had an opportunity to showcase us what a middle-class couple would be while struggling and could balance the comedy with the drama but it is the pointless, cliched comedy that make us rolling our eyes and feel sorry for wasting Ferrell's and Poehler's talents. It is going to be one of those forgettable movies that will give you a brain-fart if you're asked any question in a trivia game about this movie.
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