Blockers - Review

Blockers

Leslie Mann, John Cena and Ike Barinholtz star in the offbeat coming of age comedy titled “Blockers”. The story of three contemporary parents who early on in the film are already showing signs of separation anxiety with their teen daughter daughters growing up too fast as young women. Things get even more stressful for the parents when on the night of their daughters high school prom they discover an email where the daughters' have sworn a pact oath to lose their virginity at the end of the prom. The parents feeling utter dread and panic decide to launch a covert one-night operation to go all out to track their teens all over town in the hopes of stopping them from sealing the deal.

REVIEW: While the plot of the film was designed to show how these three loving mature parents were genuinely looking out for the wellbeing of their kids though the backdrop of some smart self-deprecating humor, the only thing that was apparent from my viewing perspective was these three parents who were nothing more than utterly wacky, gross, raunchy, rude, lewd and ridiculous juveniles masquerading as adults. With the exception of Ike Barinholtz's character "Hunter” who seemingly was a bit more open minded and accepting about his daughters life choices, the combination of the three “adults” working together, supposedly the "mature ones", endlessly stalking their daughters from location to location across town in the dark just came across as asinine and tired to me.

Apparently, someone at Universal Studios thought they were developing a clever story about modern “Helicopter Parents” who would on one hand would be infused with a lot of smart and mature humor through a gauntlet of witty predicament situations while on the other hand have their collective personalities be balanced and rounded out with genuine parental sentimentality. It did none of that.

But did you laugh Lester? Well, hell yes - you bet I did. At least six good times I laughed. Two of which had me in stitches. The first was a situation involving John Cena’s character “Mitchell” drinking beer on a frat house lawn. The second was about two people making love “in the dark”…………….so to speak. Trust me both scenes were absolutely hilarious. But six good laughs were never enough to overcome the basic problem I had with the entire film. That being it felt like a one note story with no imagination beyond the "the chase" for me to be compelled even through the prism of humor to really care about the parent’s dilemma. Instead all I saw for 1:40 minutes running time were three loving parents who on one night devolved into completely sad obnoxious parents stalking their kids and their dates as if they were terrorists.

“Blockers” eeeeeh, it's OK, but it’s absolutely not something you should ever rush out to the theater to see. I have already made that sacrifice for you.

2.25 Stars