Blockers
Directed by: Kay Cannon
Written by: Brian Kehoe & Jim Kehoe
Starring: Leslie Mann, John Cena, Ike Barinholtz, Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan, Gideon Adlon, Gary Cole, Gina Gershon, Miles Robbins, Graham Phillips, Jimmy Bellinger, Ramona Young, Colton Dunn
Comedy - 102 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 4 Apr 2018
Written by: Brian Kehoe & Jim Kehoe
Starring: Leslie Mann, John Cena, Ike Barinholtz, Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan, Gideon Adlon, Gary Cole, Gina Gershon, Miles Robbins, Graham Phillips, Jimmy Bellinger, Ramona Young, Colton Dunn
Comedy - 102 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 4 Apr 2018
From the woman who wrote one good Pitch Perfect movie, one ok Pitch Perfect movie, and one colossal mistake Pitch Perfect movie, comes a hard-R comedy about parents cock blocking their teenaged daughters. Blockers is a gender flip on the stereotype of high school seniors attempting to lose their collective virginities; think American Pie from the female perspective. In the age of acceptance and growing norms of girls having agency over their own sexuality, it was only a matter of time before they got their due at a raunchy high school comedy. However, while the girls natter on about the perfect first time with whatever boy happens to fit their mold, Blockers is about their parents and their respective comfort levels with their little angels physically moving forward from childhood into…something else.
Boy-centric gross-out comedies such as Road Trip, Superbad, and Old School take their cues from movies like Porky’s, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Revenge of the Nerds. The boys’ endeavors are shaped by the generation before them and there is an explicit expectation to live up to the greatness of their older brothers. Remember the Sex Bible gifted to Kevin by his older brother in American Pie? The “tongue tornado” became a maneuver every guy wanted to learn to show off to their skeptical girlfriends. Well, in 2018, director Kay Cannon, working off a script by Brian and Jim Kehoe, proclaim gentlemen have moved on and evolved.
Boy-centric gross-out comedies such as Road Trip, Superbad, and Old School take their cues from movies like Porky’s, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Revenge of the Nerds. The boys’ endeavors are shaped by the generation before them and there is an explicit expectation to live up to the greatness of their older brothers. Remember the Sex Bible gifted to Kevin by his older brother in American Pie? The “tongue tornado” became a maneuver every guy wanted to learn to show off to their skeptical girlfriends. Well, in 2018, director Kay Cannon, working off a script by Brian and Jim Kehoe, proclaim gentlemen have moved on and evolved.
The dudes our three leading leads choose to usher them from virgin to world-wise make good choices. If the girl spells out exactly what they are going to do on prom night, the guy is more relaxed hoping for a natural, organic timeline. If the girl says “no” at the exact last second prior to detonation, the guy immediately stops what he is doing and rolls off. I don’t remember any of these scenarios and reactions from a 1980’s or 90’s sex comedy. These are real and modern kids with their emoji shorthand and Michelin star level narcotic confectionaries. The Superbad kids just wanted to buy a bottle of whatever from the liquor store; the kids in Blockers have a limo, a hotel room, and the intention of fulfilling their sex pact. It would all be so sophisticated and organized if it weren’t for cock-blocking, butt-chugging parents.
It is sobering to imagine your kids growing up and moving away. For some, it is a time of joy and celebration, “My kid is leaving the house, hooray!” For others, it is a time of fear and depression. For single mom Lisa (Leslie Mann, How to Be Single), who spent the past 18 years attending to her daughter’s every waking need cannot fathom that in the fall, Julie (Kathryn Newton, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), will disappear – and not even to a sensible, close college like the University of Chicago, but some place as foreign as UCLA. Julie is the sex pact ring leader. She believes she is in love, she has the duvet rose petal placement planned out, and prom night is the most magical night of all to check this item off the bucket list.
Julie’s two best friends, Kayla and Sam (Geraldine Viswanathan and Gideon Adlon), are less sure about taking the plunge, but sex pact ya’ll! So, enter the clown show. Lisa discovers the sex pact after some ‘innocent’ snooping and enlists the other parents concerned, Mitchell and Hunter (John Cena, Ferdinand, and Ike Barinholtz, Snatched), to knock off the nookie. The parents are always one step behind and encounter a series of obstacles preventing them from enforcing their rights as coitus cops. The centerpiece shockorama is a beer drinking contest to get into a party the kids are at. Instead of the traditional keg stand, Mitchell submits to a butt chugging contest. It is the film’s highlight watching Leslie Mann coach John Cena to breathe deeply and stop clenching. The episode’s result makes me hope the term “ass beer spray” enters the common vernacular, a sort of “Show me the money!” for 2018.
Kay Cannon directly confronts the double standard between boys and girls losing their virginity because she knows she has to. Two moms argue about their daughters. One says to respect their privacy, let them make their own decisions, and if you want society to treat them equal in work, pay, and respect, then treat them equally yourself. Lisa is having none of it, “I don’t think about society. Tonight, I am thinking about my daughter!” She, along with the other parental sexuality censors, have already transformed from grounded to nuts. The parents are trying to intercede in the intercourse for their own separate reasons: Lisa is afraid of being alone, Mitchell is the stereotypical dad who physically wants to guard the genitalia, and Hunter doesn’t necessarily want to stop his daughter, but he believes she’s doing it for the wrong reasons.
The blockers psych each other up. “If you cared about your daughter, you would break into that house right now and steal that thing”..or “you would bend over, drop your cargo shorts, and butt chug the hell out of this forty!” While it is refreshing and unique to see this series of events through the guise of the girls, it is also different to see a mom so spun up about her daughter’s budding sexuality. Usually, it is dad who can’t handle the transformation; remember Tony Danza in the terrible She’s out of Control? That is the cliché Blockers confronts. However, even though it flips the script and gender bends the sexual soufflé, it’s not enough to separate the movie from its porky peers. There are a handful of guffaws, but the overall package is weak, and it’s hard to root for this particular pack of panty-shielding parents.
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