Twentieth Century Fox
It’s the most wonderful time of the year and Hollywood always gifts us with a holiday film or three. These movies are usually family oriented, mixtures of comedy and drama, but over the last few years the comedy has become less family-friendly with entries in the genre including A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas and last year’s raunchy but ultimately sweet The Night Before. This year a comedy collective, including Jonah Hill and Ben Stiller behind the scenes, has given us yet another holiday film that you definitely shouldn’t take the kids to see, Why Him?
The story of Why Him? is fairly simple: college-age daughter Stephanie (Zoey Deutch) has been secretly dating Laird Mayhew (James Franco), who accidentally exposes the relationship — and himself — to her family during a video chat for dad Ned’s (Bryan Cranston) birthday. With the cat out of the bag, Stephanie invites the family to spend Christmas with her in California, giving them a chance to meet Laird in the flesh. Of course, Stephanie’s uptight dad takes an immediate dislike to the brash, unfiltered and surprisingly wealthy young man, and things only go from bad to worse when Laird drops the bomb on Ned that he wants to propose to Stephanie on Christmas Day, something he will not do without Ned’s approval. Ned, who has no intention of granting the approval, tells Laird he’ll give him a chance to redeem himself, but Laird seems incapable of conforming to the ideal person that Ned wants for his daughter (plus he doesn’t think she’s ready for marriage at 22). It becomes a battle of wits between Ned and Laird, with mom Barb (Megan Mullally) and younger son Scotty (Griffin Gluck), who already worships Laird, caught in the middle.
It’s easy to write Why Him? off as just another R-rated raunchfest dressed up as a holiday movie, but it’s surprisingly funny without being insulting to the audience (you may be offended by the excessive use of the F-word, but your intelligence won’t be insulted). The whole set-up for the film could have easily gone off the rails, but the writers manage to sustain this bristly relationship between Ned and Laird for the entire film, allowing it to grow and not just be a one-note joke.
Besides the writers, credit must go to Cranston who plays Ned like any father who has a daughter of dating age. The guy she picks will never be good enough in his eyes, at least not at first, and the film establishes that Ned and Stephanie have a deep bond right from the start. She is “daddy’s little girl” and no one will ever be good enough. Thrust into this world of high technology (Laird develops gaming apps and has made millions) which is the diametric opposite of Ned’s world of printing (a dying relic of the past) in Michigan, puts Ned off balance from the start and Cranston does a magnificent job of having Ned teeter between these two worlds, often rattled and confused by Laird but never allowing Ned to become a buffoon. Cranston really holds the film together.
Franco is Franco, at least the film persona that we all know by now. But by being what we come to expect from him, Franco also surprises with how he takes that brashness of his character and imbues him with an actual sense of innocence. Laird may seem like a foul-mouthed, out of control kid who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and feels he can get away with anything, but we see that he’s not really any of those things. He’s unfiltered and socially awkward because he never really had a family (he was not born rich) and now he’s really over-compensating with Ned, sometimes totally embarrassing Stephanie … but she knows his heart is in the right place. Franco plays off of Cranston brilliantly, but most audience members will only end up giving credit to Cranston.
The movie also has some great support from Mullally and Gluck. Mullally does some great stuff with her reactions and expressions, and a scene later in the film after a Christmas party allows her to really cut loose after being almost as uptight as Ned when first meeting Laird. Gluck also works well with Cranston and Franco, and gets to participate in a few of the film’s more outrageous moments (like when Laird asks Scotty what his favorite curse words are, something a parent of a 15-year-old does not want to hear). The only real misstep is the character Gustav played by Keegan-Michael Key, Laird’s assistant/property manager/security manager. Key opts to give the character a bizarre accent and he seems to be here only to act, on occasion, as Laird’s conscious (to whom he rarely listens). There is one fun moment, for people of a certain age, where Gustav attacks Laird out of the blue while he’s trying to have a talk with Ned. I immediately thought that this was right out of the “Pink Panther” movies, where Clouseau’s manservant Cato would attack without warning to test Clouseau’s defensive skills. Ned even points this out to a completely baffled Gustav and Laird, giving some of us a little inside joke chuckle. Key, perhaps, should have dropped the accent to make the character more successful.
The film features some fun cameos from Adam Devine, Casey Wilson, Andrew Rannells and a few others that we’ll let you discover for yourselves, and even has a bit of a surprise ending. I really didn’t expect much from Why Him? but it really won me over. The biggest question now is why did Fox wait until two days before Christmas to deliver a movie that takes place on Christmas? It was almost the same question I posed when the studio released Victor Frankenstein for Thanksgiving instead of around Halloween. Perhaps someone can give the schedulers a calendar for Christmas so their films can build an audience over time instead of hoping for a week of business before people are tired of Christmas. If you are looking for something to do over this holiday weekend and Rogue One is sold out, give this comedy a shot.
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