REVIEW: Tag

Courtesy of Warner Bros.

Summer at the multiplex is an exciting time – so many explosions! – but it’s also stressful for lowly film critics like me. I write about as many movies as I can, but the nonstop barrage of new releases and the part-time nature of the job mean that some are going to inevitably fall through the cracks. So I’m constantly playing catch-up, even as I make the latest films a priority.

Which brings me to Tag, a lightweight comedy that opened in mid-June. I missed the press screening because I was out of town, but it was on my radar because the trailer made me laugh. I finally got a chance to see it, and I’m glad I did. Sure, the movie evaporated from my brain as soon as I left the theater’s air-conditioned lobby, but I sure had fun while I was watching it. That counts for something.

Inspired by a true story (meaning the screenplay takes an intriguing real-life premise and fictionalizes everything around it), five insanely competitive friends (Ed Helms, Jake Johnson, Jon Hamm, Hannibal Buress and Jeremy Renner) have been playing the same game of tag since first grade. Now, as adults, they spend the entire month of May reconnecting to keep the game going. This year, the game coincides with the wedding of the only friend who’s never been tagged. As if those stakes aren’t high enough, he supposedly wants to retire so he can go out on top.

Tag gets the most crucial element right: there are a ton of laughs, especially the weird, random kind. That might be my favorite subcategory of humor, so I was a happy guy. Most of those jokes come courtesy of Buress, who sails through the proceedings with a sense of detachment that makes his delivery even funnier.

His costars are compelling in their own ways. Helms serves as the group’s lynchpin, mostly playing it straight so his costars can get most of the laughs. He does get a couple of chances to showcase the crazy, which he takes full advantage of.

Hamm is a delight as well, clearly enjoying the chance to branch out and play against type. He excels at playing cold, insensitive jerks (there’s another term that fits better, but this is a family publication) like Don Draper on Mad Men, so it’s a refreshing change of pace to see him play a regular – although still slightly arrogant – dude.

Johnson is funny too, but he doesn’t get the same opportunity Hamm does to change it up. Instead, he’s playing the same guy he usually does. Isla Fisher, playing Helms’ unhinged, highly competitive wife is stuck in a similar predicament. She’s a blast, but the role is incredibly close to the crazy-eyed little sister she played in Wedding Crashers.

That issue with fuzzy characterization speaks to most of the problems I had with Tag. There’s barely any character development until the end, meaning it comes across as obligatory. There’s not much of an overarching story, so it feels like the plot is more like a loosely connected series of sketches in which everyone acts a certain way because a scene demands it.

People who hate each other in one scene are suddenly friends again a couple of minutes later. As a result, the flick is all over the place tonally. Sure, there’s an attempt to make all this craziness mean something important in the last few minutes, but it ends up feeling like an afterthought. Still, in the moment, there’s plenty of laughs and sometimes that’s all you need.

Tag is rated R for language throughout, crude sexual content, drug use and brief nudity.

Grade: B-