<Review by: Sailesh Ghelani>

Directed by Sean Anders. Starring Mark Wahlberg, Will Ferrell, Mel Gibson, John Lithgow, Linda Cardellini, Alessandra Ambrosio, John Cena, Scarlett Estevez, Owen Vaccaro, Didi Costine

Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes

The first one was criminally bad. This one is possibly the worst film you’ll ever see!

If you even vaguely remember Daddy’s Home then I sympathise with you. I remembered it wasn’t very good. My review of it (one out of five stars) proves I was right. I didn’t expect much from the sequel and boy was I overestimating.

It was obvious that watching Mel Gibson and John Lithgow playing the father’s of our protagonists Dusty (Mark Wahlberg) and Brad (Will Ferrell) would be the highlight. Unfortunately even actors of such calibre as Gibson and Lithgow can’t rescue the world’s most terrible script. As they droll on and on interminably with jokes that fall flat, your mind wanders off making you miss chunks of dialogue without any consequences.

A Bad Mom’s Christmas (which was still better than this) focused on the moms and their moms, and Daddy’s Home 2 is about the dad’s and their fathers. About the distance and the closeness, and how both of these things cause problems. Gibson’s Mr Mayron is the womanising, bad boy who can’t say ‘I love you’ to his son. Lithgow’s Mr Whitaker is the sickly sweet old dad who loves everything. There is an assortment of kids – we never really know whose kids and step-kids they are and frankly never care.

Step-dads like actor John Cena turn up with zero effect on the events of the film and step-moms like the one played by Alessandra Ambrosio are there for their cleavage.

None of the violent slapstick ‘fun’ works because it looks belaboured and poorly thought out. Gibson simply keeps laughing through the film as if his state of amusement will rub off on the viewer. It doesn’t. As an aside, he looks a bit like Jack Nicholson now!

I don’t think any film and its sequel have both gotten one out of five stars consecutively on this site. If I could, I would give zero stars to it. All those involved in this film – which isn’t a disaster, but simply looks like no one cared a shit – should be put down as ‘bad’ for Christmas and not get anything.

.