Daddy's Home parodies poor parenting

The first week’s box office results for Daddy’s Home show the new Will Ferrell step-parenting comedy bringing home the bacon. While the film gives little meat to chew on, the farce nonetheless imparts a how-not-to-parent lesson.

Brad (Ferrell) and Sara (Linda Cardellini) Whitaker have been married for eight months. Beset with impotency issues, Brad relishes his role as stepfather to Sara’s young children, Dylan and Megan. Sincere and straight shooting, Brad provides for his new family as a mid-level executive at a smooth jazz radio station, known as “The Panda” (a fitting metaphor for Ferrell’s trademark big, cute, and harmless movie persona).

The children are just beginning to feel comfortable with Brad when Sara’s ex-husband Dusty (Mark Wahlberg) rides his Indian motorcycle up the Whitakers’ driveway. Dusty, a paramilitary contractor, is every bit Brad’s opposite: slicked-back hair, bulging biceps, cowboy boots. But what starts as a friendly visit descends into an all-out war for the title of “Daddy.”

Sara, who is devoted to Brad, is still angry at Dusty for abandoning the family, yet she inexplicably allows him to stay at their home for the week he’s in town. But Brad doesn’t have the spine to stand up to his rival—or to a handyman Griff (Hannibal Buress), who also moves in.

Through increasingly costly purchases and outrageous stunts, Brad and Dusty duel to win the kids’ affection. After Dusty brings a dog home for the children, Brad buys a pony. Brad leads Megan’s Girl Scout troop on a hike, but Dusty builds a skateboard half-pipe in the Whitakers’ backyard for all the neighborhood kids. And so on.

Only near the film’s conclusion do the two battling daddies begin to understand what fatherhood is really about. But moviegoers should expect to find little serious treatment of the effects of divorce and remarriage on children.

In fact, Daddy’s Home (rated PG-13 for thematic elements, crude and suggestive content, and language) seems to be one big joke. The bizarre living arrangements and the auctioning of the children’s allegiance to the highest bidder will aggravate some moviegoers. But by accepting the movie as mockery, viewers’ aggravation might give way to laughter at the absurd antics of the two rivals.

Ferrell is especially sharp playing a wide-eyed Goody Two-shoes trying to parent “by the book.” “I do pickup. I do dropoff. … I listen to the Frozen soundtrack on endless loop,” Brad sighs in exasperation.

Also funny but typically crude are the many scenes where Brad’s radio station boss (Thomas Haden Church) tells him pointless anecdotes and offers idiotic advice. But the conduct of the fertility doctor, an injury to a wheelchair-bound child at an NBA game, and little Megan’s expletives are just plain tasteless.

The ending of Daddy’s Home cleverly and humorously wraps around to earlier material, but daddies (and mommies and kids) who feel they don’t need a crass course in parenting should likely stay home from this movie.