"Tag" Movie Review

By: James Southworth
Rating: 2.5/5 Stars

When I first saw that the movie "Tag" was based on a true story about a group of friends who played an ongoing game of tag well into their adult years, I sort of thought it was crazy. But, to my surprise, it turned out to be true. There's a whole article published in the Wall Street Journal about it, and this movie is heavily inspired by that article, which is written by journalist Rebecca Crosby. I couldn't help but smile and laugh, because this clearly showed a group of men who had strong friendships as well as a desire to keep the heart of their childhoods alive. I only wish the movie could've translated this theme. As a comedy, "Tag" works well sometimes and has a cast that's clearly enjoying themselves. But, the comedic aspects too often delve into excessively raunchy or inappropriately dark levels, and this movie's attempt at trying to have an emotional heart falls somewhat flat.

What works the best consistently about this movie is the performances. That doesn't surprise me, as the cast here are all incredibly talented comedians. Most of the cast take what is a sometimes weak script and can even elevate some of the more poorly written moments to a better level. I found Ed Helms to be consistently charming as the main character Hoagie. He carries this film capably. I found that out of the whole cast, he did the best at balancing the comedic aspects of his character as well as the more dramatic ones. I know that Helms has plenty of weak performances beyond his time on "The Office", but thankfully this movie isn't one of them. One of my favorite turns comes from Isla Fisher playing Hoagie's wife, Anna. Out of all the actors here, she really does a good job at embracing the absolute ridiculousness of this movie's plot. She plays her character very over the top, but I think it's fitting within the atmosphere of the film. She is probably the most consistently hilarious performance in the film; in fact, in some ways I wish the film had focused more on her. The same goes for Jeremy Renner as Jerry Pierce. He's sort of the "antagonist" of the film, as he is the one character out of everyone in the friend group who hasn't been tagged once in the decades that they've played this game. Renner relishes in portraying Jerry's innate obsession with not wanting to ever be tagged. Even in some of the more unbelievable moments with his character (more on that later), I still found him to be fun to watch. Kevin Sable as Hannibal has some of the worst written lines in the movie, but he still somehow manages to make several of them sound absolutely hysterical. Jon Hamm is good in pretty much everything I've seen him in, and the same goes for his portrayal of Bob. There sadly aren't many moments where director Jeff Tomsic lets Hamm's comedic talents shine through, but Jon still finds ways to have a good time. The weakest performance comes from Jack Johnson as Randy. This isn't entirely his fault, as his character's one personality trait is being high all the time; that's where all his punchlines come from. Annabelle Wallis is very underused as the reporter Rebecca. She's off screen for most of the movie, which makes any contribution she has unavoidably forgettable.

Like I mentioned in my introduction, the comedy of this film can simultaneously be the strongest and weakest point of this movie. The beginning of this movie is much better with the comedy it uses. A lot of it is interesting visual gags, and even the verbal jokes work pretty well. There's a whole interaction where Reggie is with a psychologist and the friend group all barge in just so they can tag him. That concept is hilarious on its own, and thankfully I felt as though the comedic potential it had was utilized well. Maybe it wasn't the best thing you could do with that situation, but it was still funny enough for me. After the beginning half hour of this movie, the jokes start to become a little bit more of a mixed bag. Some of the jokes did legitimately make me and the audience I was watching with laugh out loud. But then there were some others that just weren't funny at all, and the movie theater was deafeningly silent. Some of the jokes felt like they may have been awkwardly improvised rather than written out. That probably wasn't the case, but the fact that they felt like they weren't well-planned speaks to the often weak writing this film suffers from. There is a particularly distasteful miscarriage joke that goes on for a bit too long near the end of the movie. It felt like it was in really bad taste, and it seems like even Tomsic didn't know what to do with it. It just left me feeling gross, and I think the same goes for the audience. It really reduced my enjoyment of the ending of the film, especially as the joke and its innate cruelty is forgotten about very quickly. There's no consequences for the characters who made this joke/trick, and it really made me lose sympathy for both of them. The comedy with Jerry could also come across as weird. The scenes with him facing all his friend group trying to tag him was usually done in slow-motion. The movie also delved into his thoughts of how he was planning to evade his friends, pretty much copying the style of the Robert Downey Jr. "Sherlock Holmes" movies. I'm not sure why this movie thought using slow motion as a comedic vessel so often would constantly be funny, because it really isn't. I'd be a bit more forgiving to this movie if there was more of a balance between bad and good jokes (because most all comedies have at least a couple jokes that inevitably won't land for one audience member and will for another). There were just a few too many, for me, that didn't work. It doesn't make the movie insufferable; I could watch it and still enjoy myself. At least until the third act.

The third act of this movie is getting a paragraph all to itself, because it is easily the worst part of this movie, and left me feeling sour upon leaving the theater. Be warned, there will be spoilers in me talking about this section, because I just have to mention specific plot points in order to get my critiques across. First off, the third act is running off of the poorly done miscarriage joke- which was basically a trick done by Jerry and his soon to be wife in order for him to avoid being tagged. It's such a bad "joke", and felt needlessly cruel. Anyway, there's a somewhat cliched moment of weakness afterwords from Hoagie, who says that he's done with tag. But this short-lived (literally only like 3 minutes) moment of weakness is immediately forgotten about upon Hoagie and the friend group going to Jerry's wedding. Hoagie suddenly decides that he actually hasn't given up on tagging and that he's going to try one last time to get Jerry. It's just mind-boggling how quickly he changes his mind. But things actually get worse upon Hoagie falling over (after failing to tag Jerry) and seemingly becoming unconscious. After that we cut to him in a hospital, where we discover that Hoagie has cancer (which he's known about all this time but hasn't told his friends), and that this will most likely be his last game ever of tag. It's such an out of nowhere thing. This movie tries and fails to be dramatic. Hardly anything else has been taken seriously, up to and including a "miscarriage", so why does Tomsic expect the audience to suddenly take this last-minute reveal seriously? I just sort of checked out at this point in the movie. There are definitely raunchy comedies out there that have heart- just look at something like "The 40-Year Old Virgin". This movie is not that, and its attempt to do so felt misguided. I think Tomsic's heart was probably in the right place, but he should've put more serious moments in this movie or just went all out and made it just a comedy.

Before going officially into the credits, the movie shows some footage of the real-life men who played this game of tag. I actually found myself being charmed and even laughing at them. It was only about 2 minutes of footage, but I'd say I found that to be more interesting than most of this movie. I honestly think that a documentary about this true story would've worked better. This movie isn't the worst comedy I've seen, not by a long shot. The highly enjoyable performances by the talented cast and the solidly executed jokes might make this movie worth one mindless watch. I would choose other comedies over it, but if someone were to want to watch this movie with me, I wouldn't object; I would probably just casually watch it. "Tag" is not a great movie, nor is it entirely horrible. If you like comedies that are raunchy, then you'll probably enjoy this. Otherwise, you wouldn't be missing much if you decided to skip out.