The Reel Review
Two men and their young sons find themselves on the run, after a playdate goes horribly wrong, drawing the attention of armed assassins intent on killing them. Alan Ritchson (Reacher, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare) and TV sitcom star Kevin James (Kevin Can Wait, The King of Queens) star in this intentionally stupid, screwball comedy.
Working from a screenplay by Neil Goldman (Shrinking, Scrubs) and with Let’s Be Cops director Luke Greenfield at the helm, Playdate is one aggressively bad comedy that is neither funny nor does its convoluted plot make even a bit of sense. (Cue the zany closing credit outtakes!) Even Ritchson’s gleefully goofy comedy performance – which keeps the film from being a total failure – can’t salvage this sloppily made disaster (we see the camera crew in the car’s reflection), nor can appearances from an ensemble cast that includes Sarah Chalke (Roseanne), Isla Fisher, Stephen Root and Alan Tudyk.
Our filmmakers appear to give up on the feeble Paul Blart:Mall Cop meets a dumbed down Reacher comedy in the third act, as the film veers into a bizarre, nonsensical sci-fi twist that is too stupid to see coming. Too violent and profanity-laden to be family friendly, too meanspirited and outdated to be a comedy, this is a Playdate to avoid.
REEL FACTS
• Colonel Kurtz in Playdate is named after the insane colonel played by Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now.
• This is the third collaboration for Alan Tudyk and Stephen Root, who also appeared together in Season Four of Resident Alien and in the 2004 comedy Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story.
• Playdate was filmed in the Canadian suburb of Maple Ridge, northeast of Vancouver.
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