“Blockers” is the latest example of the millennium’s most dispiriting film trend: Stupid drunk people making stupid drunk decisions for two stupid hours.
This time around, instead of guys having a Vegas weekend, moms enjoying a night out or girls on a trip, the boozehounds are three teenage gal pals dead set on sleeping with dudes on prom night.
If “Blockers” sounds like “American Pie,” that’s because in much the same way that Barbra Streisand clones dogs, studios clone movies.
At this point, the drunk-night-out genre has become a never-ending game of Mad Libs. This time the blanks are lazily filled in with “high school senior girls,” “sex pact” and “helicopter parents.”
Three friends (Kathryn Newton, Gideon Adlon and Geraldine Viswanathan) decide to lose their virginity after the prom to ensure an extra-super-special evening. Thanks to some intercepted texts, their odd trio of parents (Leslie Mann, John Cena and Ike Barinholtz) catch on to the plan, and discreetly follow the girls to the dance, their friend’s lakehouse and, eventually, a hotel. Liquor and drugs abound.
By the way, this three-stop parental quest is a lot harder than it should be. If you’ve ever been to an average suburb, you’ll know that all these locales are about a 15-minute drive from one another. And yet the strenuousness to get from spot to spot is right up there with “Mad Max: Fury Road.”
“Blockers” director Kay Cannon was responsible for the hilarious “Pitch Perfect” movie series. And she and screenwriter brothers Brian and Jim Kehoe have peppered this film with a few great jokes, mostly delivered by the creepy-in-a-good-way Barinholtz as a distant dad. But Cannon is also better than the gross-out humor wedged in here.
Does anybody really need a full-on view of Mann grabbing Gary Cole’s testicles? Or a limo full of high school students puking all over each other? Or a beer bong being shoved up Cena’s keister?
My gut tells me “No” — for it is queasy just recalling that garbage.