Directors: Tyler Spindel
Writers: Ben Zazove and Evan Turner
Stars: Adam Devine, Pierce Brosnan, Ellen Barkin
Synopsis: A straight-laced bank manager about to marry the love of his life. When his bank is held up by infamous Ghost Bandits during his wedding week, he believes his future in-laws who just arrived in town, are the infamous Out-Laws.
There is virtually nothing original or even clever about the Happy Madison production, The Out-Laws. This comedy about meeting in-laws follows the genre playbook step by step to the letter, so you will know exactly what will happen before it occurs. The main character will suspect someone is a criminal, and their fiancé doesn’t believe them. You can then cue the main character to try to prove their theory, so much so that they become the person of interest. Throw in the affable male character, a carbon copy villain you’ve seen thousands of times and a plot line of a loved one in danger. You have the same generic film that’s released at least quarterly over multiple streaming platforms. Then throw the cherry on top because of the time-honored tradition of showing everyone busting a humorous boogie or two on the wedding dance floor before the end credits, and you have the same recycled material as a dull, mind-numbing case of cinematic déjà vu.
The Out-Laws follows the good-natured, super-sweet bank manager Owen Browning (Adam Devine). The loveable nice guy, your basic Brad Whitaker type, who somehow stumbled into his upcoming wedding day with the drop-dead gorgeous yoga instructor, Parker (Nina Dobrev). Suffice it to say, Owen is excited about his forthcoming nuptials, even if his parents (played by Richard Kind and Julie Hagerty) are less than thrilled and equate their future daughter-in-law’s career as the equivalent to stripping.
However, the wedding doesn’t seem complete because Parker’s parents are not in the picture, doing missionary work in Africa. Owen then tries to locate photographs of them to create a heartfelt photomontage for their special day. That’s when the owner of the storage locker where Parker keeps her belongings notifies a powerful crime boss (Poorna Jagannathan), who has been looking for the elder McDermotts (Ellen Barkin and Pierce Brosnan) for years after double-crossing her nearly a decade prior.
Yes, how can the creative genius behind The Wrong Missy, the inspired scribe who gave birth to Sherlock Gnomes and Tooth Fairy 2, not to mention a story outline of The Goldbergs, go so wrong? Sarcasm aside, I don’t know if we can blame director Tyler Spindel and writers Evan Turner and Ben Zazove for The Out-Law’s dull homage to The In-Laws. For one, they need to make a living. Two, Hollywood is demanding this from their creatives, limiting the ceiling of their potential and selling what the buyer is comfortable handing over money for. The formula is to buy low (Devine), mimic high (The In-Laws), find a beautiful woman to play the oblivious fiancé/wife (Dobrev), a popular comic actor with nothing to do (Lil Rel Howery), and a handful of beloved veteran performers that will be (mostly) familiar across multiple generations (Barkin, Brosnan, Kind, and Hagerty).
The point is, The Out-Laws is your typical Hollywood version of a marketing ploy for streaming services and selling product placement by taking better film ideas and repackaging them to maintain subscribers and keep advertising revenue high. Another factor in soulless cinematic exercises like The Out-Laws is that they are banking on the coveted young demographic to gobble these films up because they don’t know any better. The audience will recognize if the McDermotts just immediately eliminate the main crux of their problem there would be no justification for a feature-length film, let alone a sixty-minute network pilot with commercials.
That being said, films can succeed if they are similar to other movies. Here, Devine needs to be more lightweight, an actor and comedian to carry any film without significant help. Unfortunately, the script leaves him holding the bag with ramblings that aim for adorable but go on too long and land at grating. Dobrev has little to do but looks confused and distressed, not to mention her role is so underwritten; she somehow has no idea her parents were notorious bank robbers for decades of her life when all the signs are there. And while Poorna Jagannathan, so funny and poignant in Netflix’s Never Have I Ever, makes the most of her comedic villains, the character is so unnecessarily evil. It’s nothing but cartoonish fluff that doesn’t do this comedy favors. If you enjoy The Out-Laws, I admire your tolerance and ability to let trivial things roll off your back. However, you should ask more from your streaming service that keeps increasing prices and advertisements in your viewing experience.
