House Party

I wonder if modern comedies like The House (2017) just aren’t for us. We like Will Ferrell, we like Amy Poehler, we love Jason Mantzoukos, but we didn’t like this movie much.

The premise is pretty simple: Ferrell and Poehler have a lovely daughter who was accepted at the college they went to. They expect a town scholarship to pay her way. But the mayor (or chief town councilman or whatever), Nick Kroll, says the town’s budget won’t allow it. So they need to get the tuition somehow.

Meanwhile, Ferrell’s friend Mantzoukos is stressing because his wife is leaving him and his house in foreclosure, due to his gambling problems. So they all go off to Vegas. Ferrell and Poehler are reluctant at first, but a streak at the craps table puts them within range of tuition. Then they lose it all. Someone says that the house always wins, so Zouks has the big idea - what if they are the house? They convert his empty and soon to be foreclosed house into a casino and it’s off to the races.

The situations and jokes are mostly pretty funny, but none of it holds together. Ferrell has a nice bit where he’s afraid of numbers - He sees a $30,000 tuition bill and goes “Three million dollars!?!” It even pays off later when he has to remember the combination to a safe. But it makes it hard to imagine him as a functioning adult. Poehler has some inappropriate discussions with their daughter about her nickname in college: “Smoke a lot of pot and piss on the lawn” Amy. They smother their daughter and ignore her by turns, and yet she seems devoted to them. In fact, the daughter is in kind of a different movie - one of those sweet grounded comedies about a girl coming of age - that we don’t really get to see.

Plus a lot of the bits look like improvs that didn’t quite work, but they used them anyway.

I’m skipping a lot of pretty good stuff, like Kroll’s affair with town treasurer Allison Tillman (Brooklyn 99), and the whole mafia thing. Also, I can’t say we hated this - we watched it, laughed a little, but at the end were kind of - I guess this just isn’t our thing.

However, when I checked the reviews, I see that most people didn’t really like this movie. Actually, it was kind of a love it or hate it, no middle ground movie. So maybe we liked it better than most. Or maybe just liked it for the Zouks.