Rated-R comedies will always have their place for those of us looking for more of an adult adventure at the movies. The recent success of Deadpool 2 showed the market for adult oriented comedies is still there, but a fair amount of its audience needed to be accompanied by an adult. While Incredibles 2 dominated the box office on its opening weekend with its broadly palatable PG-13 rating, Tag had a pretty respectable debut in its wake.
It’s based on an article published in the Wall Street Journal about an adult group of guys who have been playing tag for decades. When one member of the group tries to retire from the game, the others combine their efforts in an attempt to finally take him down. This movie will never get confused for an award winning piece of cinema, but it does carry some inherent charm. The mantra, “we didn’t stop playing because we got old. We got old because we stopped playing”, is repeated several times throughout the film and I would think most people can relate to that message in some way…even if you can’t relate to the plot. If you can look past the silliness, the story is really about a group of friends finding a way to stay together even as their lives diverged. Even though I was in the audience to watch and enjoy the mindless fun, the movie had a surprising amount of heart.
Even more surprising, Ed Helms was the worst part of this movie. It seems like the studio latched on to him given the relative success of the Hangover franchise and his direct contributions to it, but his character was just way too over the top. Even for a story like this, he wasn’t believable…and it was based on a real person. The screenwriters simply didn’t build a character worth caring about even though “Hoagie’s” personal journey is central to the plot. Rob McKittrick wrote and directed the cult hit Waiting…which was another film with a simple premise saved by strong performances. Mark Steilen worked mostly on television, except for his screenplay for the low budget The Settlement starring John C. Reilly…but that was nearly 20 years ago. The pair wrote several other entertaining characters and plot lines, but Helms’ didn’t get much of that.
Jeff Tomsic stepped into his first full length feature with this project. He did a solid job and told much of the story with a flair for the dramatic. Perhaps his lack of high profile experience led him to focus on Hoagie even though his character was not the most interesting or the funniest. The other guys in the crew had better personal angles and were more fun to watch with each other, for whatever reason, Helms wasn’t a great fit. If you’re paying Jon Hamm and Jeremy Renner to be part of your movie, you might as well make them the focus.
Hamm plays Bob…boring ass Bob. He really doesn’t have much to offer other than a romantic rivalry with Chilli, another member of the group. Hamm does what he can with the character, but it feels like a wasted opportunity. I wouldn’t call Renner the villain exactly, but he does kinda fit the bill as Jerry. Even though he is one of the guys, he stoops to ridiculous levels in order to be the best at the game and alienates some of the guys in the process. Much of the story revolves around tagging Jerry for the first time ever before he can retire from the game undefeated. Renner was one of the more enjoyable aspects of the movie and it was good to see him doing something fun while Hawkeye had to ride the pine for Infinity War.
Jake Johnson of New Girl fame was good as the aforementioned Chilli, a stoner divorcee who lives with his dad. Johnson has some of the very best dialogue in the film and his rivalry with Bob for the affections of Cheryl Deakins (Rashida Jones) made for some of the better moments. Hannibal Buress was really good as well playing Sable. There’s nothing particularly identifiable about Sable other than his relative normalcy. He stands in stark contrast to the rest of the group, but Buress’s comedic timing lends itself to this kind of movie. Isla Fisher played Hoagie’s incredibly intense wife, Anna. It was good to see her tap into that wild side that made her so fun to watch in Wedding Crashers.
Some movies just aren’t complete without a killer soundtrack. Gabe Hilfer did a magnificent job as the music supervisor. The selection of hip-hop classics turned the clock back a couple decades, injecting life into the scenes and going a long way in enhancing the overall experience. Eric Linden, the stunt coordinator crafted some clever sequences to demonstrate just how good Jerry was at tag and music laid over the top of those moments brought it all together.
Let’s face it, there’s no way this movie would have been on anyone’s radar without the names attached to it. Warner Bros. shelled out $28-million to make it and I’m guessing the majority of that went to cast, which was central to both the film’s appeal and success, because there were no big budget items throughout the movie. The premise was interesting enough, but the cast is what moved the needle. However, the execution misses the mark more often than I would have anticipated.
Recommendation: I was expecting more, but wasn’t completely disappointed with what I got. Given the cast, this movie fell short of its potential. It’s not the worst way to spend 100-minutes at the movies.