Writer-director Craig Johnson broke out with 2014’s spiky comedy drama The Skeleton Twins, a film that hit familiar Sundance indie beats but hit them better than most. He has struggled a little since, from annoying Woody Harrelson-led comedy Wilson to ho-hum gay high school romance Alex Strangelove, and so one can understand why Johnson might feel like a big swing in a different direction might make most sense.
It has led him to a script by Saturday Night Live writer Kent Sublette called The Parenting, a throwback supernatural comedy horror that tries to remind us of a time when these rambunctious concoctions were far more common. Think Beetlejuice in the 80s or The Frighteners in the 90s or the deeply underrated Housebound more recently, a high-energy rush of scares and laughs that should feel effortless but too often doesn’t, the difficulty of such a balance perhaps serving to explain why so few are made these days. It might also explain why backers New Line didn’t quite know what to do with this one, the film gathering dust on the shelf for almost three years and now landing on Max with a suitably concerning trailer released less than two weeks prior.
Said trailer ended up being an accurate representation of a film which starts off as an amiable comedy before going completely off the rails when it becomes a horror. It’s a shame as when the stakes are low and the genre more defined, there’s some fun to be had from the Meet the Parents adjacent set-up. It’s familiar sitcom territory – potential in-laws meeting potential in-laws for the first time – but centered on a gay couple instead, providing an added and less well-explored specificity. Rohan (Nik Dodani) and Josh (Brandon Flynn) have planned a weekend away, renting out a large, remote country house so their families can meet. Rohan’s adoptive parents are rich and a little snobbish (Edie Falco and Brian Cox) while Josh’s are more working class and unrefined (Lisa Kudrow and Dean Norris).
The initial escalation of tension – misunderstood names, inappropriate jokes, an overly amorous dog – edges from amusing to genuinely funny thanks to a cast blessed with a wealth of comedy experience. But as pleasing as it is to see pros like Falco and Kudrow engage in passive-aggressive sparring, it’s also a nice surprise to see how well Flynn handles himself, an actor whose limited credits have been almost entirely dramatic up until now. He is a remarkably light-footed comedian, bringing as many laughs as his older co-stars, even if he is lumped with modern comedy’s most exasperatingly overused cliche: the dreaded weed gummies. A plea to all screenwriters going forward: continue brainstorming if this is what you’ve come up with.
What’s frustrating is that there could have been a broad yet funny, character-based comedy here if things had remained of this world. But as soon as a demon enters the picture, summoned by a wifi password and entering the body of Cox’s no-nonsense dad, things start to disintegrate. The standard of jokes takes a sharp nosedive, as puerile lowbrow farce replaces relatably awkward humour, and even a game cast struggles to handle the silliness of it, grimly trying to make fart and dick jokes work. As things get goofier, the only actor able to truly sell any of it is Parker Posey, playing the owner of the house whose presence becomes a saving grace, the actor able to turn the slightest of movements or pronunciations into a laugh-out-loud moment.
But while she is able to swiftly identify and nail the exact right tone, everyone else starts to scramble. As a comedy, it stops being funny and as a horror it never starts being scary with Johnson’s direction far too drab and lifeless for something so cartoonish and schlocky. Big swing, bigger miss.
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The Parenting is now available on Max in the US, Binge in Australia and in the UK at a later date
Source: theguardian.com
