DIRECTOR: John Hamburg
LEAD CAST:
James Franco, Bryan Cranston, Zoey Deutch, Megan Mullally, Griffin Gluck
& Keegan-Michael Key SCREENWRITER:
John Hamburg & Ian Helfer PRODUCER:
Stuart Cornfeld, Dan Levine, Shawn Levy & Ben Stiller EDITOR: William Kerr MUSICAL DIRECTOR: Theodore Shapiro GENRE: Romantic Comedy CINEMATOGRAPHER: Kris Kachikis DISTRIBUTOR: 20th Century Fox LOCATION: USA
RUNNING TIME: 112 minutes
Technical assessment:
3.5
Moral assessment:
2:5
CINEMA rating: V18
MTRCB rating:
PG 13
Greeting her dad
by webcam during his birthday party, Stephanie (Zoey Deutch) is put in the hot
seat by the premature arrival at her pad of her devil-may-care boyfriend Laird
Mayhew (James Franco) who wiggles his behind in front of the camera. Most shocked of all are her conservative, mid-Western,
middle class parents who only then get
to know that their Stanford-educated daughter is already in a
relationship. The embarrassment over,
Stephanie invites her whole family—dad Ned (Bryan Cranston), mom Barb (Megan
Mullally) and 15-year old brother Scotty (Griffin Gluck) to spend the Christmas
holidays at Laird’s mansion, with the intention of letting them come to know her
weird boyfriend better. Oil and water
meet, and the Mayhew mansion turns into mayhem.
The production
sets are in keeping with the characters they represent, particularly the
Southern California mansion that’s like a cross between an ostentatious nouveau riche palace and a Google
estate. Why him? reminds one of Meet
the Parents, a Robert de Niro comedy where old school meets new age and
round pegs are stuck into square holes.
One can say Why him? is a
formulaic movie although it has its own charm owing to the new combination of
characters and the gags that rise from different circumstances. Hamburg and Helfer’s story is plausible and
could happen to anyone in America-the-land-of-the-free: the romance plot is
given tension by the conflict between a prospective father-in-law who runs a
printing company that’s nearing bankruptcy, and his daughter’s over-hopeful beau
made a new billionaire by his computer games business.
Any parent would understand Ned’s disgust of the
aspiring son-in-law who besides being foul-mouthed is as libidinous as a goat
in the mating season. To strengthen the message
of Why him? Laird, the character in
question, is made exaggeratedly boorish, unfiltered, and devoid of good
manners. But to Stephanie, he is refreshingly
honest, guileless, good-natured, and loves her truly, and therefore must be
given a chance. For CINEMA to say that
this is a totally objectionable film is to be guilty of the very crime Why him? is fighting against: judging a
book by its cover. The foul language,
potty humor, raunchy jokes, et al, stand for the cover; and the book’s pages
are the values it promotes—family, commitment in a relationship, deference to
elders in matters that truly count. (Laird
is a product of a drunken one-night-stand, grew up without ever meeting or
knowing his father, and the one thing he desires most is to belong in a family. While he seriously wants to marry Stephanie,
he would not do so without the blessing of her father). So, why not him?
