Tag

Teaching you how to avoid people during a pandemic since 1983.

As we are edging closer to outdoor-friendly temperatures, our reasons to continue self-isolation are thinning out. But we must resist this temptation, even if it means to treat this quarantine like a game of tag. So if you need inspiration on fending off the impending doom of the physical touch, boy do I have a movie for you: Tag. It’s a goofy movie meant for adults that can be fun at times (but not enough to be the saving grace) and provides no reason to watch it other than its coincidental analogy between a game of tag and social distancing. The premise follows a group of grown men who spend one month a year playing a game of tag since 1983, which is amusingly based on a true story. This clique in the movie is led by actor Ed Helms, who from a comedic standpoint, brings nothing new to the table except import his better known character Andy Bernard from The Office. But remember when Andy Bernard was one of the mains in season 9? I’m sure we’d all like to forget that. While he as an affectionate clown has its places with the right repartee, following up with a dumb reaction of “whaaaat?!” after an admirable effort in funny one-liners is nothing short of lazy humor. It's like the child humor that is forced into Star Wars these days, except no children will be even allowed to watch this because it's is Rated R. Then who is supposed to be laughing at this stuff?

The two most annoying things in Tag, however, are its choice of music and the use of female characters. As an exaggerated depiction of a kid’s game, action is a big part of the movie. Though it's well choreographed and amusing at rare times, this morsel of goodness is sadly detracted by the production’s simple-minded association of action sequence and hype music. Apparently to the filmmakers, this entails making a lazy selection of pop/rock music and pasting one at random onto an already banal pan-shot of middle-aged dads trying to look cool coming out of their Honda Civics. Furthermore, forcing female characters into this movie was a cheap attempt at spicing up the movie with romanticism. Flirting, kissing, and marrying are, when we watch it, are sexually arousing as governed by our instincts. But if that’s all reason why the actresses are there for, I believe a better option can be found on Pornhub. Basically, there is no compelling storyline pushing their character development and for all their efforts, the females are just not funny. One female character literally does nothing but scream. Another is a tool for making jokes about widows. And another is there as eye candy. Consequently, you can treat this movie as a pandemic guide, documentary, satire, action movie, whatever. But story-wise, a tag game for the boys is better off without the girls. Although it does provide poignant insights on the value of friendship, it's really not worth all this trouble for such inspiration; there are better movies for that. Some movies, no matter how painfully mediocre, can be ironically amusing at the right circumstances. Sadly, that is just about the only favorable thing going for Tag right now.

*All images on this post are legally owned by Broken Road Productions and New Line Cinema.