This movie looked to be very hilarious from the trailer that I had seen in the past 2 weeks or so. And I needed to see something funny to lighten my mood, so my wife and I decided to see this on the first day of the year 2017. The fact that it was the only movie playing in Lotte Avenue which we had not seen, certainly made the choice easier. We went to Lotte Avenue since on the new year's eve, we spent another weekend staycation at the Ascott hotel in the same complex. They had this nice access door direct from hotel to the mall. Anyway, after our lunch with my brother in law's little family, we watched this movie at the 2.30 PM show. Well, let us get on with the movie now.
Brief Story Line
Ned Fleming (Bryan Cranston - Godzilla, Get A Job etc) was a middle aged family man who started and built his own printing company to become quite a success for many years. He was adored and trusted by his employees that included his right hand man Lou (Cedric The Entertainer - Barbershop, the voice of Maurice in Madagascar trilogy etc) and Kevin the IT guy (Zack Pearlman).
During a night when he was celebrating his 55th birthday with his wife Barb (Megan Mullaly - Will & Grace TV series), his 2nd child Scotty (Griffin Gluck) and the rest of Ned's employees, Ned was provided with a surprise birthday wish from her eldest child Stephanie (Zoey Deutch - Vampire Academy, Dirty Grandpa etc) who was currently studying away in Stanford university. Things got very complicated and embarrassing for Ned's whole family when during the video conference, Stephanie's boyfriend Laird (James Franco - Spiderman trilogy, Oz The Great and Powerful etc) came to her dorm and started to do lots of crazy stuff which unfortunately was all cut by the Indonesian censorship body (probably had to wait for the uncut version available to see in few months time to find out what were the scenes all about).
Anyway, it was revealed later that actually Ned's company was having financial problem and only Lou knew about this. Ned needed to find a solution for his company's trouble asap, otherwise he may have to close the company. Lou also advised Ned to go over to Stephanie's place and get to know Laird better, which Ned decided to do so and also to spend the Christmas together as Flemings family tradition.
Hence came Ned, Barb and Scotty to visit Stephanie and stay at Laird's house. Ned was surprised to see the size of the house and finally found out that Laird was actually a very rich person who created a very famous video game. However, Laird was a successful person who never had proper education as he did not finished his high school, and resulted to him always using profound language with a particular fondness of the "F" word in every sentence. Ned had a very good "personal assistant" named Gustav (Keegan-Michael Key - Let's Be Cops, Tomorrowland etc) who was also his mentor and adviser in various matters including communication as well as self defense.
Laird was trying very hard to impress Stephanie's family by giving a lot of surprises which he thought would be loved by Ned, Barb and Scotty. However, being such a simple minded person, as you would have guessed, the surprises did not impress them, but instead made the Flemings quite shocked (except maybe Scotty who was really impressed). Ned was very upset with Stephanie's obvious attraction to Laird who he believed was really not suitable for his daughter. Ned became even more disappointed when he found out that the relationship between Stephanie and Laird had been going on for a while, and also Laird intention of going to propose to Stephanie on the Christmas day. Not to mention, Ned was also feeling that Laird's background and circle of friends really too different from Ned's family. During the next few days, Laird would try his best to change Ned's mind to accept him in the family, while Ned would try his best to make sure Laird would not go ahead with his plan of proposing and also to sabotage Laird's relationship with Stephanie.
So could Laird change Ned's mind? Could the Flemings survive the Christmas holiday in the house of Laird which was obviously very difficult to adapt? What would happen to Ned's family business that was having the financial trouble? Find them all in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
As I mentioned in the beginning, I was expecting a very hilarious movie especially with lots of funny scenes in the trailer. However, after completing the whole movie, I felt that it did not have so much of funny scenes that could make me laugh very hard. The movie felt too short of everything. Too little of smart 1 liner, too little slapstick scenes, too little R rated scenes (this one probably due to censorship) and the conflict between Ned and Laird also felt not heavy enough. Perhaps the writers wanted to make Ned's character becoming a reasonable and open minded person but unfortunately it made it hard to believe that Ned could be so objective with Laird's wish to be his son-in law. I think Robert De Niro's performance in Meet The Parents for his disapproval of Ben Stiller was more believable.
However, there was a fun performance given by Keenan-Michael Key as Gustav, especially his scene with Bryan Cranston in the toilet of Laird's house. That was priceless. And the voice of an Artificial Intelligence created by Laird who was all over the house and called Justine (voiced by Kaley Cuoco - The Big Bang Theory TV series) was also quite fun. She became like a separate character that was able to provide some funny remarks every now and then.
One thing that was interesting in the movie was that it had various public figure cameo appearance such as Elon Musk (the owner of Tesla industry), Richard Blais (Top Chef celebrity), Steve Aoki and a surprise appearance almost at the end of the movie. Only challenge was that if we were not into the IT industry or TV reality show, we may not be able to know who they were.
My personal view of this movie was that, if only the R rated scenes were shown more or the conflict between Ned and Laird been made a lot heavier then it's possible that I would have more fun seeing the movie. Not that I did not enjoy this movie as it did provide some funny scenes as well. In conclusion, if you are expecting a totally full of humor movie where you would laugh out lout all the time till the end, then it probably would not satisfy you. But if you are in the mood for some fun without overthinking the movie, then you can try to watch this one. The choice is yours.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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