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osprey_archerKay Cannon’s Blockers feels like two movies squashed together. One is a winningly natural comedy about three girls, friends since grade school, who make a pact to lose their virginity on prom night, with varying results. The other is an intermittently charming but inherently squicky tale about their parents, who learn about the pact by accident, freak out, and proceed to pull out all stops to try to stop the pact from reaching fruition.
Now I appreciate that many parents would not be thrilled by this plan, but actually storming Prom to stop their children seems like a bit much - let alone following them out to a lake house, then back in town to sneak into the hotel after-party, still intent on preserving their daughters' virginity. As Mitch’s wife informs them, this seems more than a little retrograde.
The fact that this side of the story works at all is due entirely to the charm of the three adult leads, who have become somewhat loosely connected friends through the friendship of their daughters. They’re very funny together, but their OTT adventures as they chase their daughters around town seem oddly out of step with the naturalism of the daughters’ stories… and of course we’re periodically reminded why the parents are tearing around town, and every time it’s just like “Why are you putting so much effort in this?”
To be fair, the movie realizes that their quest is an overreaction that springs from their own hang-ups, not a fair reaction to the daughters' impending loss of virginity. Hunter is a divorced dad who feels guilty about letting the divorce undermine his relationship with his daughter and believes this may help him reconnect with her. Lisa is a single mom who has become emotionally dependent on her daughter and dreads her impending departure for college (and seems to believe that preventing her from losing her virginity might prevent her from growing up). Mitch is a big softie who weeps over minor milestones in his daughter Kayla’s life (“This is like when he watched Frozen,” his wife comments to Kayla) and can’t seem to bear the fact that she’s about to hit this particular milestone.
But all the same, I think the movie would have been improved by cutting back on the shenanigans in order to give more space to the conversations that the parents and daughters have when the parents finally do catch up. I feel that everyone needed to have a longer conversation about boundaries than the movie allows time for.
Also, let’s be real. The movie I really want to see is the story of the road trip that’s about to kick off at the end of this movie. Julie and Sam and Kayla, along with Julie’s boyfriend, are just about to set off on a road trip from the Chicago area to UCLA to get Julie and her boyfriend settled in for their freshman year of college. Doesn’t that sound like it could be an amazing road trip movie? Complete with the overprotective parents calling every evening, and the kids frantically insisting “Oh yeah, everything’s fine!”, because they know their overprotective parents will kick it into overdrive if they admit that an angry raccoon has taken over their car.
Now I appreciate that many parents would not be thrilled by this plan, but actually storming Prom to stop their children seems like a bit much - let alone following them out to a lake house, then back in town to sneak into the hotel after-party, still intent on preserving their daughters' virginity. As Mitch’s wife informs them, this seems more than a little retrograde.
The fact that this side of the story works at all is due entirely to the charm of the three adult leads, who have become somewhat loosely connected friends through the friendship of their daughters. They’re very funny together, but their OTT adventures as they chase their daughters around town seem oddly out of step with the naturalism of the daughters’ stories… and of course we’re periodically reminded why the parents are tearing around town, and every time it’s just like “Why are you putting so much effort in this?”
To be fair, the movie realizes that their quest is an overreaction that springs from their own hang-ups, not a fair reaction to the daughters' impending loss of virginity. Hunter is a divorced dad who feels guilty about letting the divorce undermine his relationship with his daughter and believes this may help him reconnect with her. Lisa is a single mom who has become emotionally dependent on her daughter and dreads her impending departure for college (and seems to believe that preventing her from losing her virginity might prevent her from growing up). Mitch is a big softie who weeps over minor milestones in his daughter Kayla’s life (“This is like when he watched Frozen,” his wife comments to Kayla) and can’t seem to bear the fact that she’s about to hit this particular milestone.
But all the same, I think the movie would have been improved by cutting back on the shenanigans in order to give more space to the conversations that the parents and daughters have when the parents finally do catch up. I feel that everyone needed to have a longer conversation about boundaries than the movie allows time for.
Also, let’s be real. The movie I really want to see is the story of the road trip that’s about to kick off at the end of this movie. Julie and Sam and Kayla, along with Julie’s boyfriend, are just about to set off on a road trip from the Chicago area to UCLA to get Julie and her boyfriend settled in for their freshman year of college. Doesn’t that sound like it could be an amazing road trip movie? Complete with the overprotective parents calling every evening, and the kids frantically insisting “Oh yeah, everything’s fine!”, because they know their overprotective parents will kick it into overdrive if they admit that an angry raccoon has taken over their car.
