There’s a hint of authenticity buried in the scenario of the otherwise obnoxious Why Him?, a low-brow comedy about a father meeting his daughter’s unfortunate new boyfriend in which the actors seem to be having more fun than moviegoers likely will.
Despite some painfully amusing awkwardness, this proud collection of gross-out gags and bodily-function humor strains to be edgy and outrageous but winds up running out of gas.
The daughter in question is Stephanie (Zoey Deutch), who arranges for her family to spend Christmas weekend at the California mansion of her nightmarish older beau, Laird (James Franco), an ill-mannered tech billionaire who spews vulgarities and lacks common decency.
Although her mother (Megan Mullally) has an open mind, Stephanie seems oblivious that the meeting would irritate her conservative father, Ned (Bryan Cranston), who runs the struggling family printing business. As Ned’s discomfort escalates into rage, Laird initiates some bonding exercises that he hopes will lead to Ned’s blessing for an eventual marriage proposal.
Their generation gap is exacerbated by the dwindling role of paper printing in a high-tech society — with an exaggerated depiction of that divide adding a layer of tension amid the proceedings.
Despite some adversarial comic sparks between Cranston and Franco, the one-joke concept feels like a spin-off of Meet the Parents with a role reversal. And the film is directed by John Hamburg (I Love You, Man), who was a co-screenwriter on Meet the Parents and both of its sequels.
The mayhem funnels into a predictably heartwarming third act, especially considering the seasonal setting, which rings false because of the narrative contrivances and strained eccentricities that come before it.
The script by Hamburg and Ian Helfer aims low and occasionally scores accordingly. In particular, the film generates some solid chuckles from the budding friendship between Laird and Stephanie’s impressionable and clean-cut younger brother (Griffin Gluck).
However, plenty of punch lines are telegraphed in advance. From the moment we first see that Laird — for some reason — has a giant glass case in his living room containing a dead moose encased in its own urine, we pretty much know what’s eventually going to happen to said glass case, said moose, and said urine. And it ain’t pretty.
