Blockers (2018) Review

"What would Vin Diesel do?"
-Lisa Decker



It's prom night!  And best friends Julie (Kathryn Newton), Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan), and Sam (Gideon Adlon) all make a pact to lose their virginity with their prom dates.  Their parents accidentally discover this when Julie leaves her laptop open.  "Cool-Mom" Lisa (Leslie Mann), "Macho-Dad" Mitchell (John Cena), and "Mostly-Absentee-Dad-Trying-To-Make-Up-For-Not-Being-Around-Enough" Hunter (Ike Barinholtz) all decide to go after their daughters and stop them from having sex.


What Works:

Blockers is hysterical.  The jokes are mostly great and some of the moments in the movie, like the butt-chugging scene, are so absurd that you can't help but laugh.  But it's not just the jokes, it's the performances.  The whole cast is great.  The daughters are all well-developed, even though they aren't the real focus of the movie, and their motivations are well-defined.  But the parent's are fantastic.  Leslie Mann is ridiculous and John Cena is just so damn charismatic that everything he does is fantastic.  

Surprisingly, the highlight of this movie is Ike Barinholtz.  Neither Mitchell or Lisa like Hunter very much, and the audience isn't supposed to at first.  But, he becomes the voice of reason of the group and we see the movie mostly through his eyes, as Mitchell and Lisa are too ridiculous to be the audience's perspective.  He is also the most complex character in the film.  His relationship with his daughter is strained, but we eventually learn more about what happened from his side of the story.  His character is the heart of the movie and I really wasn't expecting that.  By the end, it was his story I cared about the most, and it's a great to see a teen-sex-comedy have some heart and emotion behind it.


What Sucks:

I really don't have much.  A few of the jokes don't really land.  But that's it.


Verdict:

Blockers is the best comedy I've seen so far this year.  The performances are great, the jokes are hilarious, the message is strong, and it has some really heart.  Blockers has definitely got it going on.

 9/10: Great 



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