He seems hell-bent on winning back his spot at the head of the proverbial table, but Brad is determined to protect his position as the family’s new material and moral provider (such is Daddy’s Home’s conception of domesticity, with Cardellini, a fine actress, reduced to finger-wagging and hand-wringing). Brad’s the kind of doting sweetheart who places inspirational notes in the little ones’ lunchboxes and tears up when Megan asks him to a “daddy-daughter dance.” But just when he thinks he’s finally being embraced as a legitimate paterfamilias, Brad is slapped with the news that Dusty, Sarah’s ex-husband and the father of her children, is coming for a visit.Īs his name suggests, Dusty ( Wahlberg) is a vision of virility, a badass with a leather jacket, slicked-back hair and muscles for miles, who inspires adulation in his kids and may still make Sarah slightly weak in the knees, too. To borrow a term from today’s youth - who, given the movie’s PG-13 rating and risk-averse humor, may be its target audience - Daddy’s Home is basic.įerrell is Brad, newly wedded to Sarah (Linda Cardellini) and stepdad to her two grade-school-age kids, Megan and Dylan (Scarlett Estevez and Owen Vaccaro, shouty).

Daddy’s Home, which pits Ferrell’s brainy stepfather against Wahlberg’s brawny biological father in a battle for the love of the kids, plays like a comedy underwater: Its rhythms are sluggish, its jokes predictable and the gags are set up with such thudding deliberateness that even the sight of Ferrell losing control of a motorcycle, careening through the air and crashing straight through his house barely raises an eyebrow.

Daddy s home