Movie Review: Why Him?

Bryan Cranston, James Franco and a lionhearted supporting cast attempt to wring laughter from a tired script while asking the cinematic question, Why Him? They manage... just.

A man is driven to breaking point and forced to make questionable professional choices as a means of providing for his family, is one way to describe Bryan Cranston’s transition to film following the end of Breaking Bad.

How else to explain a four-time Emmy-winner agreeing to play the villain in 2017’s coming Power Rangers reboot and the doddering dad in John Hamburg’s gross-out Christmas comedy Why Him?

Of course, we haven’t seen Power Rangers yet, and maybe his work there as disembodied head Zordon will retroactively justify his Oscar nomination for the not-good (at all) Trumbo.

However, we have seen Why Him?, so, at this moment in time, we can confirm Cranston is not living his best cinematic life.

He plays Ned Fleming, a straight-laced, phone holster-wearing father of two who discovers, painfully, that the apple of his eye, Stephanie (Zoey Deutch), is shacking up with man-child Laird Mayhew (James Franco), an app-developing f***boi ten years her senior. The bombshell is dropped on poor Ned—who’s wrestling with a failing invite-printing company to boot—during a Christmas vacation to California.

Ned’s wife, Barb (Megan Mullally), and son, Scotty (Griffin Gluck), find themselves unexpectedly charmed by the uncouth, tattooed Laird while staying on his Palo Alto compound, though Ned isn’t having any of it—certainly not when he discovers that Laird is planning on popping the question to Steph (pending dad’s approval).

So unfolds a series of increasingly awkward encounters, between Ned and not only the approval-seeking Laird, but also his technologically-advanced house and curious staff, which includes a Japanese robot toilet; an all-seeing, eavesdropping operating system named Justine (voiced by Kaley Cuoco); and Gustav (Keegan-Michael Key), a German ‘estate-manager’ who runs Laird’s life. At different points in the feature, Cranston takes a burst of toilet water to the face, winds up drenched in urine and unwittingly describes the experience of being soaked in unprintable human fluids. Did I mention he also has a Tony Award?

It’s not that Cranston doesn’t seem happy to be here. He is a notorious ham, ever since his days of Malcolm in the Middle, and he seems like precisely the kind of actor to get a kick out of this brand of humiliating, fluid-based comedy (unlike, say, Robert De Niro, for whom the experience of deriving pleasure from anything is now remote and foreign).

It’s thanks to his enthusiasm—and that of his co-stars, including the game Franco, Key (riffing on Martin Short’s gonzo work in Father of the Bride) and the good-natured Deutch and Mullally—that Why Him? is even passably amusing. (I laughed. I didn’t feel good about it.)

Surely there are further heights for Cranston to climb? Please don’t let Why Him? mark the beginning of his ‘coasting’ phase. Sure, I’ll always prefer it when a talented actor takes on the part of persnickety dad in these by-the-numbers comedies, but we already have a Greg Kinnear for that. Cranston, as he revealed in Breaking Bad, has more colours to share.

Written by Hamburg and Ian Helfer, and apparently based on an original idea by Jonah Hill, Why Him? doesn’t dare challenge or subvert the rom-com tropes of the zillion other “father knows best/daddy’s little girl” movies that have come before, gross as they may be. (This one attempts a vaguely feminist approach by empowering Stephanie somewhat, and Deutch and Mullally smartly shrug off their male counterparts’ chest-beating entirely, sparing them from the unfortunate ‘nag’ stereotype.)

Why Him? isn’t especially good, but it’s sometimes funny. I suppose they should have changed the tagline to, “Why not?”

3/5

In cinemas Boxing Day. Rated MA15+ for strong crude sexual humour and coarse language.

Photo: Fox