Tag: Film Review

Tag: Film Review

Cast: Ed Helms, Jeremy Renner, Jake Johsnon, Hannibal Buress, Annabelle Wallis, Rashida Jones, Isla Fisher, Jon Hamm, Leslie Bibb

Director: Jeff Tomsic

Every year, during May, a US-based group of friends come together to play a game of Tag.

It's a tradition that's been running since they were kids - and it's based on a true story.

It sounds like a bizarre proposition, but that's the basis for Tomsic's frat-pack movie. After some 30 years of playing, one of the gang's number Jerry (Jeremy Renner, playing up his action man pretensions) has never been caught.

So Hogan, Bob, Chilli and Sable (Helms, Hamm, Johnson and Buress respectively) gather together with the sole intent of making it this time, given that Jerry is getting married...

There's little plot to Tag, a film that has some briskness of pace, lunacy of execution and is based in some premise of heart, toying as it does with male friendship through the years. (As is especially demonstrated in the real-life credits sequence, and repeated footage of them playing as kids).

However, there are some moments that stand out in this cinematic version of The Washington Post story - albeit for the wrong reason.

An entire sequence based on miscarriage is anything but funny, leaving the film with a sour taste that its initial geniality fails to shake off. It's a woefully misjudged set of moments and deserves to have been struck from the script, leading more to a shocked intake of breath, rather than a shocked laugh.

Equally, the film's final desire to wrap everything up in a mawkish hug is just sickly rather than sentimental - and while the film's final shots really do return to the premise, the journey to get there feels cheapened by some of these moments. Contrasted with the final shots of the original gang playing the game via home movie footage, there's a meanness that pervades some parts of the film which feels definitely unwarranted.

However, Tomsic's slow-mo variations on the action sequences of people getting tagged is quite well executed, a visual bravura touch that may be overplayed, but digs deep into the silly premise of people just playing a kids' game.

The ensemble gel well, and while Fisher's hysterical wife to Hogan may make you question her sanity, the group makes a good fist of pulling off some bromance chemistry, amid the early Bro-vengers assemble montage shots.

Ultimately, Tag brings the prats to the pratfalls, and thanks to a brisk pace, surprisingly it never outstays its welcome, delivering some unexpected LOL moments and some subtle adlibbed one-liners (mainly from Buress) that will cause more mirth than expected.