Directed by: Andrew Jay Cohen
Written by: Andrew Jay Cohen, Brendan O'Brien
Starring: Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler, Jason Mantzoukas
IMDb Link
Will Ferrell comedies are hit or miss for me. For every Anchor Man (2004), there's a Semi-Pro (2008), and unless it's some offbeat genius like Stranger Than Fiction (2006), I can't be sure just how I'm going to feel about the movie once it's over. The House falls somewhere in the middle of the spread; I liked it a little, but not enough for even the most memorable of the movie's moments to have a lasting impact.
*Warning: Potential Spoilers Ahead*
The set-up is pretty simple: over-attached parents Scott and Kate (Ferrell and Poehler) want to send their beloved daughter Alex (Ryan Simpkins, not the rugby player) to college, but can't afford it, so they agree to work with their friend Frank (Mantzoukas) to start up an underground casino in order to earn the money. The film glosses over a lot of details to get the plot going, but the for the sake of simply getting in to the film's funniest situations, it's serviceable. Most of the preamble is just forcibly awkward dialogue for the sake of humour and the set up for a couple of events later, nothing that grabbed my attention, but nothing aggressively unfunny either, it's just like the film takes a while to kick in to gear because they couldn't find a way to really make anything really laughable. I giggled at a line or two, but it seemed like a workable placeholder until the film could progress to the real moments of comedy.
Once the casino is actually in play the laughs become more consistent. There's definitely a case of "the best bits are in the trailers" here, as two of the funniest scenes are featured in the trailers, but thankfully the film's best work is left a stunning surprise and what we see in the trailers aren't the entirety of those scenes. What the films lacks in clever dialogue, it makes up for in slapstick; the physical gags are brutal and hilarious, and in some cases have better aesthetics than a lot of modern action movies (ooh, action movies are badly shot nowadays, never heard that one before). Honestly, the "Fight Club" scene is almost more impressive than funny. I won't directly spoil the later scenes for anyone that wants to see the movie, but as the film gets more absurd, it gets better. The corruption of character that Ferrell and Poehler go through as they become tougher and meaner leads to some of the funniest moments in the movie, covering for it's mostly flat and boring downtime.
This is where the film falls flat most of the time; there's a lot of superfluous junk that just gets thrown around, probably to pad the film's running time, but without a lot of work put in to them. Jason Mantzoukas' Frank has a bit of character conflict with his wife, which is what motivates him to help create the casino and try to put his life back together, but it's barely developed across the movie and has an unearned payoff. Nick Kroll plays a local council member who's having an affair with Allison Tolman's character (also a council member), and embezzles money for their affair, which is what motivates him to have the main characters investigated and their money 'confiscated', while Jeremy Renner shows up as a mob boss. Either of these stories would make for a decent set up for more conflict, but they're both underdeveloped, so I had little appreciation for them outside of the strong moments of slapstick that they brought. These factors aren't flat out terrible, but for a comedy, there's not a lot of laughs drawn out of them. The film tries to use them instead to create light drama to give the film some sort of emotional core, but it's not much better at that.
The Verdict: The House is fast, fun, and forgettable. While it's strong in its physical comedy, it doesn't work well when it attempts other kinds of humour, and its attempts at emotional arcs and conflict are superficial at best. It's probably not worth seeing in theatres unless you always enjoy Ferrell and/or Poehler, but if you find yourself looking at movie times and not sure what to watch, I'd take this over Transformers at least three times.
Rating: 5/10
Published June 29th, 2017
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