The first Daddy’s Home pitted Will Ferrell’s step-dad against Mark Wahlberg’s cool dad. After a tense rivalry and a school dance-off, the two dads put their difference behind them to become best buds. But not all dads get along, as Daddy’s Home 2 is here to remind us, especially when it comes to granddads.
The new Transformers movie is all about buried secrets. Texan Bostonian inventor bro Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) and brainy Oxford professor Vivian Frumplebumple (okay I admit it: I didn’t catch her last name so I made that up) discover a world they never knew: The hidden history of Transformers on Earth. It turns out the Transformers have played a role in every armed conflict throughout time. The Transformers helped King Arthur, and they threw an assist to the Allies during World War II. There’s more to meets the eye in those history books, doncha know.
Now that Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg’s dads have got their “co-dad game on lockdown,” it’s time to shake things up for the holidays. The first trailer for Daddy’s Home 2, aka Sofia Coppola’s most anticipated film of the year, has arrived and it’s brought the grandaddy of all problems — literally — along with it. Yep, grandpa’s comin’ home and he’s Mel Gibson.
Director Peter Berg and Mark Wahlberg are tackling two devastating events in recent American history in their latest films. Following the recent Deepwater Horizon, the filmmaker and actor’s next film this year will follow the tragedy of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing in Patriots Day.
With everyone obsessed with Star Wars: The Force Awakens, very few people noticed the other huge hit of December: the Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg comedy Daddy’s Home. Very quietly, this film about the rivalry between a square stepdad (Ferrell) and a supercool biological father (Wahlberg) grossed more than $150 million in the U.S. and $240 million worldwide. The movie made $70 million more than The Other Guys, the first film that paired Ferrell and Wahlberg together as mismatched buddies, and it was Ferrell’s biggest comedy since Elf back in 2003. Daddy’s Home was a bigger success than the first Anchorman or Talladega Nights (or any Adam McKay / Will Ferrell movie, for that matter).
It’s funny that the poster for Ted 2 features the title character with his back to the camera and his hands suggestively poised near his crotch above the tagline “Ted is coming, again” because the whole movie revolves around the fact that Ted can’t come, not even once. Ted doesn’t have any genitals or a reproductive system, so he can’t have a baby with his wife. His search for a sperm donor eventually spills into the legal system, where a court case will decide a surprisingly complex question: Is Ted a person?
Will Ferrell is never not busy, which means that he’s never pinned down. He may be a successful solo movie star, but he’s a man of many partnerships, never missing an opportunity to share the screen with a variety of co-stars. With the arrival of Daddy’s Home, Ferrell hopes to bring his onscreen partnership with Mark Wahlberg to John C. Reilly-ian levels. Hopefully, the movie itself is funnier than the new trailer. After all, the last time these two teamed up, we got the massively underrated The Other Guys.