Gave Tag a second chance this afternoon with friend. I had previously described my failed attempt to watch it a few days ago as the equivalent of a gas station attendant refusing to serve me the old taquitos under the heat lamp, and I may have described my impression of the first thirty minutes to someone as “A movie about five actors who needed some extra cash,” but I was kind of charmed by this film in the end. The emotive turn in the second act threads the needle between being too schmaltzy and absurdist (wife has a theory she learned in college about the resolution of comedies being a tug of war between realism and absurdity). Most of the five characters (Hannibal Burress you will always be a lone wolf) pair off to establish relationships with one another. There are moments when things could have resorted to more established tropes when the screenplay is fine with letting things remain unresolved and a little ugly.
My favorite scene has to do with the gang’s time in the gym and how things escalate so quickly. The preparation for the turn rewards you for paying attention. It’s nice to see the Guy from Dr Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog getting some work at the Sandpiper finally. And LilRel Howery’s cameo at the beginning in the hiring office was just as funny the second time round. The pacing is pretty solid. This movie is an ensemble slapstick comedy and as the title might suggest there are a lot of scenes of people running, chasing, Go-Pros strapped to mounts like Mother! all over again. It’s kind of nice to see five handsome guys make the goofy genre work in a way that has only recently been reserved for the likes of Chris Farley, Rowan Atkinson, and Melissa McCarthy.
That being said, there are some jokes from a different, darker time that feel a little stale for a movie with such Nice Guys. For instance, not sure why converting to Islam is a punchline, or why the fear of coerced gay sex is a thing in 2018, even if the character clever disguises the dead horse he’s kicking by accusing the gang of being “homophobes” where he clearly means to say (and would’ve said in 1993 or 2003) “homos”. These are moments that suck the air out of otherwise genuinely funny scenes. They’re these weird rough patches where the script punches down for no real reason except to be vaguely aggressive in an attempt to seem trangressive, but it’s not really that edgy to make fun of gays or Muslims, it’s just sloppy writing at best and weirdly othering at worst.
The other place where the movie just seems old and a little unimaginative is in its treatment of female characters. The film tries to defend its boring screenplay decisions by having a male character explain, since the gang wrote the rules when they were nine, no girls are allowed to play. Let the confusion of those tenses sink in for a moment. It’s an explanation that makes as much sense as it sounds, and only really explains why 3 of the 5 men in the group have serious relationship issues with women. Most of the action of female characters is what the writer Claire Vaye Watkins describes in her essay “On Pandering” as “girls watching boys do stuff,” almost literally. Reporter watches men chase each other around the room. Dutiful wife watches men chase each other in golf carts. Rachida Jones watches boys fight over her. Mom watches her boys club scamper in and out of the house.
Cut a girl a break. Instead of spending two different scenes trying to negotiate why it is that none of the participants are female, just let Amy Adams play. The script would’ve been the same, maybe even less bad. The audience wouldn’t have been confused. There weren’t too many characters or relationships for us to keep track of. It might have actually improved the story in a number of ways. I get why the resistance. I think, at least. Tag wants to be a bro movie. It wants to explore the sad state of male friendship in 2018. The emotional vocabulary for men is so hollowed out that they must resort to disguising their feelings for one another in childhood rituals. I get it. It’s slapstick I Love You Man. It’s Ring Lardner and George S Culton’s June Moon. But you don’t have to throw women into the meat grinder to make a good movie about male friendship. And in writing a movie about the hollowing out of male friendship, Tag sure can do a lot of damage to the depiction of male-female relations. Isla Fisher’s character is kind of the idealized wife figure: she’s the girl-next-door swears-like-a-sailor sex-kitten who initiates French fantasy sex and suggests gangbangs to spice up married relationships. The mom is preternaturally permissive, flirts with Chili. Even the reporter, a substitution from the male reporter in the real-life story, is eerily made up and in on everything, enough to bat eyes at the bartender when the boys need a solid. Women do not need to be shunted to the periphery to clarify the importance of male relationships. In fact, their inclusion oftentimes further deepens characters.
The one place where friend and I agreed about this (he suggested I was kind of painting writers into a corner by criticizing representation: either there are no women and you complain or the women that are in the movie aren’t complex enough, but I suggest there’s a third option where the men and women characters are equally well-written) is in the depiction of Hawkeye’s wife. Her transformation into a wily, playful partner in Renner’s ruses fills her out and changes our perception of her depth, and not just for the better. She’s someone who initially seems to threaten the solidarity of the group and then later affirms its legitimacy by participating in it. The screenwriters understood that female participation could reflect positively on male characters while also doing interesting things for plot in this instance.
Which is to say, Tag has a few warts, but it’s making an effort. It’s not just “filmed improv” (check out Every Frame a Painting‘s piece on Edgar Wright and How To Do Visual Comedy, thanks brother!). It’s trying some new things out while also elevating a seldom visited genre to tell stories about masculinity, which is worthy of your attention if you’re into that sort of thing.
Wife is back!
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