Daddy’s Home

Sean Anders, the guy who directed Sex Drive (2008), That’s My Boy (2012) and Horrible Bosses 2 (2014,) foists another rotten nugget of mean-spirited mediocrity on an already beleaguered populace with Daddy’s Home, an unfunny, bland yet somehow also vaguely offensive “family-friendly” comedy featuring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg at the height of their self-parodic powers. Ferrell is the sensitive and awkward nice guy who works at a “smooth jazz” radio station; Wahlberg is the beefy and tough bad boy lamely introduced with the opening riff from AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck”.

Together they fight over the generic “hot mom” (Linda Cardellini) by vying for the affections of her two supposedly adorable moppets, themselves prone to making homophobic jokes about men who appear less than 100 per cent “manly”. Daddy’s Home is one of those curious bro-coms that pretends to disdain the macho asshole but is really rooting for him – Ferrell’s character is not only routinely physically and verbally humiliated for being a caring, responsible person, the film goes so far as to render him literally sterile. See it if you enjoy watching talented people waste their time, and also enjoy wasting yours.