![]() Memorable Movie Quote: "We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing.""ĭVD/Blu-ray Release Date: Own it early on digital August 17, Blu-ray and DVD debut on August 28. MPAA Rating: R for language throughout, crude sexual content, drug use and brief nudity.Ĭast: Jeremy Renner, Ed Helms, Jake Johnson, Annabelle Wallis With such a great premise and an even better cast I thought Tag would be a sure thing for plenty of fun and yuks. Most of the stabs at humor come off as infantile silliness at best and unforgivable laziness at worst. Perhaps if Tag were a much funnier film its flaws wouldn’t matter so much. Too many of those moments were used to fool us into thinking something important was about to happen, only to learn it was a cheap ruse to get the next guy tagged. Unfortunately, we’ve had the rug of emotion pulled out from us a few too many times. Tomsic and company go for the feels in the closing act, but those emotions haven’t been earned. Jerry is eventually made to realize that his expertise at the game and avoidance of being “tagged” has actually had a detrimental effect on that friendship. Their game of tag is actually a metaphor for celebrating friendship and keeping those little things from our childhood alive. And that’s also where the film’s heartfelt but poorly mishandled message resides. Much of the film’s humor – what precious little there is – is couched in the reality and visualization of grown men continuing to play a kid’s game. Even a bit that features a masturbating stuffed animal fails to muster laughs and instead has us groaning at the forced strains. Gallows humor is a tough nut to crack in a comedy, and it proves too much for director Jeff Tomsic whose jokes about miscarriage, torture, and punishment have us squirming in our seats rather than rolling in the aisles. It all makes for an awkwardly disjointed game that is often too mean-spirited to earn our buy-in when it tries for sympathy later on. Tonally, the film is all over the place with a misguided sentiment that veers abruptly from openly cloying at times to uncomfortably dark at others. The premise is interesting enough, and with a stable of such fine comic actors who set out on what is essentially a road trip, how can things possibly go so wrong? One must look no further than the shallow script – by novice big screen writers Rob McKittrick and Mark Steilen – that misses its mark more often than it hits and garners hardly a single laugh beyond the film’s opening scenes.
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