Daddy’s Home 2 movie review: Mark Wahlberg, Will Ferrell and Mel Gibson can’t save this holiday film

Daddy’s Home 2 movie review: Nothing really goes wrong enough to make Daddy’s Home 2 entertaining.

Daddy’s Home 2 movie cast: Mark Wahlberg, Will Ferrell, Mel Gibson, John Lithgow, Linda Cardellini
Daddy’s Home 2 movie director: Sean Anders
Daddy’s Home 2 movie rating: 2 stars

Dad to step-dad, grandfather to step-grandfather, infant boy to prepubescent teen, all together in a wooden cabin (booked via “Airbnb”) amidst snow ahead of Christmas. What all couldn’t possibly go wrong, especially when the actors in the mix include the cast above?

And yet, even as Anders throws everything, including machines that go flying and guns which are misfired, into this sequel, nothing really goes wrong enough to make Daddy’s Home 2 entertaining.

The longest time is spent, for some reason, on the setting of a thermostat. Four grown-up men discussing it in the middle of the night in their underwear isn’t as great an idea as it may have seemed on paper. Meanwhile, all the usual tropes, including new-age, kid-glove parenting (Lithgow) versus old-school, hard-as-nails fatherhood (Gibson), play out in this film timed for the festive season.

It only gets slightly funny towards the end, especially when the disjointed family puts together the Nativity scene.

What is most striking though is how far Daddy’s Home 2 goes towards facilitating the rehabilitation of Gibson, who is allowed to continue being the bad guy (drunk, muscleman, womaniser) and yet be adorable.

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