Christmas turkey!

Daddy’s Home 2

Starring: Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, Mel Gibson, John Lithgow

Director: Sean Anders

Genre: Christmas comedy 

Rating: PG-13

RUNTIME: 100 Mins

This festive sequel to the 2015 ‘dad-off’ between Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell returns with double the dads, and just about half the laughs.

With Mel Gibson and John Lithgow joining the cast, it comes as proof that vamping up a film’s star power doesn’t necessarily result in a Christmas miracle.

And, that might be exactly what Daddy’s Home 2 needs if it’s going to be a box office success this time round … or perhaps just a director who knew better how to utilise the excellent comedic chemistry tying Wahlberg and Ferrell together.

On more than one occasion, it’s only chemistry that saves the scene.

But add Mel Gibson’s gruff, ex-astronaut, absent-father stereotype, with some toxic masculinity driz-zled on top, and an over-affectionate Lithgow forever sipping a cup of hot cocoa, and you have all the ingredients for a turkey.

With the right chef, it could have been oh so different. Instead, director Sean Anders steers this sleigh over some rocky terrain, picking up every bad cliche and slapstick gag along the way. It’s difficult to keep up with how many times someone gets hit in the face, or falls off a roof, or threatens to hit some-one-else in the face.

It’s all tiresome and trite.

The premise is a continuation of the funny first adventure into the world of modern parenting. Brad (Ferrell) and Dusty (Wahlberg), along with their families, are all coexisting harmoniously. They share fa-therly responsibilities, and it seems like they’re ready to ‘co-dad’ their way to a happily ever after. That is, until they decide to have a ‘Together Christmas,’ in the interest of familial bonding.

You can almost hear the ominous Jaws theme in the background. Dusty receives a phone call from his father Kurt (Gibson), unseen for five years, who invites himself over for the holidays. Ferrell’s trademark wide-eyed smile fills the screen at hearing the news, and it’s so heartwarming that for a moment the audience joins in, ignorant of the ill-articulated mess they’re about to witness.

Don (Lithgow) reinforces this, stumbling into his scene with doe-eyed hope, the antithesis to Gibson’s gruff, intrusive cynicism, yet clinging to a suitcase full of his own father-son issues.

What follows next is a whirlwind of testosterone-fuelled tension all strung together like malfunctioning Christmas lights.

There are a few redeemable laughs on the way, but overall the mechanism is faulty, predictable and could definitely do with replacing with a newer model.

The film attempts to marry Christmas charm with a crass, no-holds-barred vibe, and, sadly, these two notions mostly end up like most of the film’s characters: divorced.