Why Him?

Year: 2016

Genre: Comedy

Directed: John Hamburg

Stars: James Franco, Bryan Cranston, Zoey Deutch, Megan Mullally, Keegan-Michael Key, Griffin Gluck, Cedric the Entertainer, Zack Pearlman, Kaley Cuoco, Adam Levine

Production: 20th Century Fox

Why Him? is about as close as you can get to stinking as a movie without necessarily being completely and irredeemably awful. A lot of American comedies seem to be falling into this mean of “just-bearably-good-enough”. So much so that I think we should coin a phrase…sucktastic? A meh-ricle? Below ugh-rage?

While I work on it, I might as well tell you about Why Him?, a movie about a bourgeois Midwestern family traveling to the West Coast to meet their college daughter’s boyfriend. The kicker here is the boyfriend; one Laird Mayhew (Franco) is an eccentric billionaire completely lacking social awareness and a filter. This comes as a big surprise to the family patriarch; Ned (Cranston), who sees Laird’s unconventional lifestyle and outward inanity as an affront to his close relationship to his loving daughter Stephanie (Deutch).

I feel like I've watched something like this before...

The high concept alone is ripe with possibility. Perhaps if the characters vaguely resembled humans, the screenplay could have pit the sometime arcane social graces of Midwestern congeniality with the laid-back Techtopian peculiarities of Silicon Valley. The film further sets up sub-textual conflicts as Ned, the owner of a family operated printing press tries and fails to acclimate to Laird’s aggressively millennial ephemera. It’s old vs. new, rich vs. middle class, salt of the earth vs. not-salt-of-the-earth. The possibilities are simply too good to ignore.

Then like a toddler ignoring his new toy and instead playing with the box it came in, Why Him? proceeds to crush the soul. The movie becomes grating within the first fifteen minutes, right when Cranston and Franco occupy the same space for the very first time. It is at that moment you become aware that both of these accomplished and worthy actors are trying to achieve two very different ends.

Cranston quietly seethes and sighs in exasperation with every big comedic set-piece. The movie is clearly on his side throughout, but it fails spectacularly to find a tone, an arc, let alone the real human being Cranston is evidently trying to create. I’m assuming he was lost somewhere amid the hours of improvised footage that was shot, because that’s how comedies are made these days. If I had to guess I’d like to think he was trying to channel Richard Dreyfuss in What About Bob? (1991) but ended up with the put upon lethargy of the parents from Step Brothers (2008).

Seriously, where was this guy?

 Franco on the other hand is playing the same dumb, obnoxious lothario he’s always played in films like these, only with a tacked on sweetness that makes him the victim of farce of the laziest stripe. It’s clear from his barrage of vulgarity that he’s playing for the cheap seats in this film, which upon his introduction to the family feels like they’re putting the least clever Trailer Park Boy in a Ken Loach film.

You saying, you have all the power? I don't think so Focker.

At one point a character tells the entrenched Ned, “you think it’s him versus you but he’s not fighting, you’re the only one fighting.” That indeed is the film’s most serious flaw; all the conflict is within the mind of one character. And sure the film tries to flip the script, putting the entire onus on the would-be father-in-law instead of the son-in-law. But that model quickly falls apart when the film tries to stir the pot as Laird confesses he’s trying to ask Stephanie’s hand in marriage.

Thankfully with a clash of character direction, minor characters are given a chance to shine. On the farcical side, Keegan-Michael Peele’s wacky personal assistant/confidant/evasive parkour instructor does have a few good moments. Meanwhile, down on earth, Megan Mullally absolutely slays it as the family matriarch whose look of extreme discomfort comes with the funniest quips.

Yet for every decent jest there are about a dozen or so, that just plain don’t work. In the quest for cringe, so many comedies today fail to do the very thing their supposed to do, and instead coax reactions out of the sheer awkwardness of it all. Stop it - please, just stop shooting for the bare minimum! Stop being a half-a**ed crumbedy. – Okay, I promise I’ll try harder which, in fairness is what this film should have done.

Final Grade: D-