Watch of Shame: The House
I hit the motherload. I accidentally picked a watch of shame that features one of the kings of bad movie commentary: Jason Mantzoukas. I was already excited, but that discovery made it so much sweeter.
For the first half, I actually worried if I had made a bad choice of films because it didn’t seem nearly as bad as the Rotten Tomatoes scores would lead me to believe. It seemed like a standard, decent enough comedy. When you have Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler as the leads playing off of each other, the baseline still has to be at least relatively amusing. And it was! The plot was really creative. A family learns they are not being the scholarship for their daughter that they had been relying on to put her through college. Desperate, they are easily talked in to starting an illicit, semi-underground casino by their friend (Mantzoukas) who seems to be the king of bad ideas. Naturally, it escalates, crashes and burns.
Where this movie goes impressively off the rails is when they get in way too deep and start utilizing the weirdest kind of violence, as if they’re mobsters and not just suburban parents. It goes from entertaining to gory so quickly it almost made my head spin. It felt like there were two movies in one, and while I was a fan of the first, I would have been fine never having seen the second. I’m far from being a comedy expert, but this seemed like something really out of Poehler’s comfort zone and it showed. Although, maybe that was the fun of it: trying something new or different.
One thing I have to give this movie credit for is the comedic timing. It’s unsurprising considering the incredible cast list of some of the funniest film actors today, but they all just meshed so well together that I often found myself wondering how much was scripted and how much was just letting truly hilarious people lead the way with some stellar improv. The little bit of a blooper reel over the end credits solidified this musing of mine, because the cast seemed to be having the absolute best time making this movie. Thankfully, that is evident in the final production, so even with all of my eyebrow raising and head shaking, I can’t deny that everyone was all in.
I think if there had been a little less escalation, this would have been an overall solid movie. Unfortunately, the almost-spur-of-the-moment genre change threw me for an unwelcome loop. There are definitely entertaining lines and scenes in the second half, but it feels like such a letdown after how enjoyable the first part was. I didn’t expect a confusing amount of pseudo-violence and the few scenes that contained it were enough to put me off of the whole thing. If for some reason this review makes you intrigued enough to check it out, I’d recommend calling it quits when you hear about a new identity of one of the characters is The Butcher. Although, there is a cameo from an Avengers actor that is so bafflingly funny in the last third that it would almost be worth sticking around.