By Emilio Frenk
Director: John Hamburg
Cast: Zoey Deutch, James Franco, Bryan Cranston, Megan Mullaly, Griffin Gluck, Keegan-Michael Key, Zack Pearlman, Adam Devine and Cedric the Entertainer.
Rating: Poor.
John Hamburg, director of “I Love You Man” brings “Why Him?”, another holiday comedy movie that hit theaters last december and the results were very poor.
The movie centers on Ned Fleming (Bryan Cranston), a CEO from a printing company in Michigan who is happily married to his wife Barb (Megan Mullaly) and has two children: Stephanie (Zoey Deutch) and Scotty (Griffin Gluck).
One day Ned receives a facetime call from his daughter Stephanie, who currently studies at Stanford University; she asks the family to spend Christmas Eve in San José, California. At the beginning Ned is hesitant but eventually he will agree to come with his family to visit her daughter in Northern California.
Once they are in San José, the family will meet Laird Mayhew (James Franco) an app, videogame creator and multimillionaire who happens to be Stephanie’s boyfriend; to make things worse he constantly swares and curses which drives the family crazy, specially Ned.
Now Ned will do anything to protect his daughter from Laird who not only will try to gain the Fleming’s trust but will pop out the question to Stephanie unless Ned prevents it.
“Why Him?” is a comedy that had some laughs and had an interesting start but at the half of the second act of the film, the movie went directly to a downward spiral.
I have the feeling that I have seen this kind of movies before and this reminded me of a carbon copy of “Meet the Parents” of 2001 directed by Jay Roach.
John Hamburg is a director who knows to direct this kind of movies. He did with “I Love You Man” which not only is a funny movie, but has a heart and is sweet and touching. Here this wasn´t the case and the movie by moments went to far.
The screenplay also written by Hamburg and his co writer Ian Helfer was too weak and by moments it abuses of swearing and goes to far with the gags and becames to sexist.
I was having a high expectation towards the chemistry between Bryan Cranston and James Franco, since both actors are the most talented in Hollywoood but I didn´t see it here.
There were moments that there were funny but sometimes it drove me crazy the overacting of both actors.
Yes, there were moments of tenderness but they were just a few. When the movie became redundant it stopped being funny and I didn´t laugh for a second.
On a positive note the funny thing of this film was the good comedy involved with Keegan-Michael Key who plays James Franco´s assistant in the film and James Franco, who are having a training that consists in combat and I consider it a homage to the “Pink Panther” movies between the relationship of Inspector Clouseau played by Peter Sellers and his butler Cato played by Burt Kwouk. Even in the film this moment is mentioned by Bryan Cranston´s character.
I honestly had expectations of this film of becoming a true and good comedy since I really liked “I Love You Man” but this was not the case and it was a huge dissapointment.
This movie had the potential to be a good holiday comedy due to the cast and power house actors like Bryan Cranston and James Franco but there were not well directed and the results speaks for itself.
I hope this is a learning experience of John Hamburg, who is very talented in directing comedies but this wasn´t the case.
With that being said, “Why Him?” was one of 2016 biggest comedy dissapointments and unfortunately I cannot recommend it.