Review: Tag

Tag
Cert: 15 / 100 mins / Dir. Jeff Tomsic / Trailer



So, I see Hollywood's quest to recreate the lightning in a bottle which was The Hangover continues apace, with an ensemble comedy featuring the crap one out of Hangover, the crap one out of Avengers, the crap one out of Jurassic World, the crap one out of Baywatch and the crap one out of Baby Driver.

Three guesses what's happened.

Initially telling the story of a 30 year game of tag through the device of a reporter keen to write about the gang, the cast roster quickly expands to a number of players it can't realistically juggle. We're treated instead to a series of clockwork-timed set-pieces which have the air of something that was originally written for some movie anyway, but pulled off the shelf and dusted down for this.

Playing the living fuck out of its tenuous True Story™ card, the film has, admittedly, more laughs than it deserves. Although these come from choreographed slapstick rather than the half-baked script which feels like it's been written by a committee. A committee who decided that waterboarding and miscarriage were fine to use as punchlines*¹. At least we now know that playing tag with this writing team would be so thuddingly predictable that it'd be a piece of piss to stretch the game out to 30 years...

We get a montage of camcorder footage before the mortifyingly self-indulgent end credits, showing the real life participants' tags over the years. This has more wit and sincerity than anything in the hour and a half before it.

Not enough ideas to actually justify its own existence, Tag is essentially 100 minutes of middle-aged men making dick jokes. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

Game Night, Mike & Dave Need Wedding Dates.



Nope.



If you're desperate and it's £3 in Asda.



I should hope not.



That's entirely possible.



There isn't.



Level 2: Jeremy Renner's in this, and he's been in those Avengers films with (among others) Sam 'Windu' Jackson





*¹ No word in the film's final moments on whether the waterboarding, miscarriage or cancer sub-plots were based on factual events or the screenwriters' idea of upping the comic/dramatic ante.
The cancer thing in particular feels horribly ill-judged. Did this happen? If it did and the guy died, then it might be an idea to put up a card dedicating the film to his memory. If it did and he survived, it might be an idea to put up a card letting the audience know. If it didn't happen at all, it might be an idea to drop it from the fucking screenplay after what's come earlier with the fake-miscarriage debacle. Not going to lie, I didn't stay 'til the very end of the rolling-names, but then I didn't think I should have to. "By the way, Terry died" is hardly a post-credits stinger, is it? ^{[ BACK ]}

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