Tag-2018

Director Jeff Tomsic

Starring Ed Helms, Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm

Scott’s Review #1,010

Reviewed April 10, 2020

Grade: D

Tag (2018), starring Ed Helms, weakly attempts to re-create some semblance of magic that The Hangover trilogy (2009-2013) initially had, in which the actor starred.

The result is an over-the-top and self-indulgent mess that incorporates the standard gags that raunchy comedies always do and a little more.

The characters are caricatures, and the film provides no character development or anything fresh to stay with the viewer after the credits roll at the end.

The most interesting part is post-credits, where the real-life figures the film is based upon appear.

The film gets off to a dumb start as Hogan Malloy (Helms), an established physician, inexplicably gets a job as a janitor at an esteemed corporation to go undercover and “tag” Bob Callahan (Hamm).

The childhood friends, along with “Chilli” Cilliano (Jake Johnson), and Kevin Sable (Hannibal Buress) attempt to pursue and “tag” their other buddy Jerry Pierce (Jeremy Renner), who has alluded to the “loser award” for the past thirty years, given to the member last tagged during May, when their annual contest is held.

The rest of the film piggybacks on this premise as the group pursues Jerry in tired form as adventures ensue. The specifics are running through other people’s apartments, tumbling down fire escapes, impersonating older women, and continued use of backflips, stop-motion editing, and nutty situations.

You get the idea.

The least appealing quality of Tag is that it feels forced and too derivative of similar films. The filmmakers try to create a “buddy film” and a camaraderie between the characters that never amounts to much. The reason for this is that they embed each character with specific qualities that define them instead of making them fresh or creative in any way.

We meet Chilli as he smokes pot with his father, revealing that he is divorced, unemployed, and a pothead. Bob is uptight, business-like, and the ladies’ man. A token black character (Kevin) is the comic relief.

The characters are one-note and uninspired.

Other weak points from a character standpoint are prevalent. Hogan is written as the “straight man,” meaning the most sensible of the group. He is the main character and has a competitive streak that his wife, Anna (Isla Fisher), shares.

Her character is most irritating as she has fits of rage and then turns sweet. Fisher has been cast in raunchy comedies for most of her career, so it would be nice to see her branch out to better roles.

Finally, Hogan’s mother, the local bartender, and a fitness worker are written poorly.

As a bonus, the film adds a homophobic sequence to offend audiences. Meant for laughs, as are most offensives, the male fitness worker is lightly interrogated as the men attempt to locate Jerry.

A back-and-forth involving presumptive oral sex is written as a joke, and in addition to being unnecessary, the sequence goes on and on.

Wishful thinking is for genre comedies to finally create something fresh and stereotype-free or make mockeries of groups of people.

Predictably, the conclusion is silly and trite. The film culminates in a hokey wedding scene when the friends are tricked by Jerry’s fiance, who fakes a pregnancy and miscarriage in a gag-worthy effort. A moment of feigned sincerity is followed by a juvenile rapid-fire torrent of “You’re It!” that would make a ten-year-old boy roll his eyes in disbelief.

Tag is not a complete disaster. If one sticks to the entire watch, a couple of tidbits of pleasure emerge. Familiar classic rock songs like Danzig’s “Mother,” Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” and “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” by Crash Test Dummies are interspersed throughout the running time.

An added romantic triangle between Bob, Cheryl (Rashida Jones), and Chilli has potential if it were not relegated to a subplot with no resolution. Both men have chemistry with Cheryl and possess some likeability.

A film that will certainly wind up in the $1.99 (or less) bargain bin, Tag (2018) might have been a relaxed effort by the cast of actors to shoot, but they must have had more fun than anyone watching it will have.

With big-name stars and an interesting premise on paper anyway, the film fails to deliver the goods, embellishes based on a true story to the max, and results in a complete waste of time.