MOVIE REVIEW: Blockers

Three Parents and three Daughters are going through their own different events on the night of the prom.Â Where the young girls are planning to lose their virginity to their dates on the night, the parents learn of the sex pact and decide to stop them no matter what the cost to their sanity or dignity. This is the new coming of age comedy that will hit the mark for the fans who were around for the first American Pie cinematic release and their children.

American comedies are at the minute so hit and miss but yet they lean heavily on the miss side.Â They mistake having funny people in the film for having a solid comedic script.Â Blockers has funny people in it, with John Cena surprising me, but also manages to have one of the best comedic scripts from an American comedy over the last 12 months.Â This year only Game Night beats Blockers for American Comedy gold.

The story is simple enough, you take American Pie from the point of few of the girls and you add in over protective parents that don’t want them to go ahead with the losing of the virginity.Â Julie, Kathryn Newton, is best friends with her Mom, Leslie Mann, for the last 18 years it’s just been them.Â She wants to lose her virginity on prom night and move across country to a different college than a local one to assert her independence from Mommy.Â Newton and Mann have quite the good chemistry together, but seriously Mann can play this role in her sleep.Â John Cena and Geraldine Viswanathan play Mitchell and Kayla, Kayla is a jock and Mitchell is the father who gets behind every thing she does.Â Cena has near perfect comic timing and proves that he’s more than muscle.Â The film makes sure not to hang on those arms too much.Â Ike Barinholtz and Gideon Adlon play Hunter and Sam.Â Hunter is a Dad, like so many across the world, who are shut out of their kids life after a divorce, while Sam is struggling with her sexuality torn between what she thinks society expects and the truth of her heart.

The film works best when the two different age groups are on their different paths.Â The Parents trying to find out where the kids are going after their prom and the kids just going through the prom and the after parties.

There are many similarities to the American Pie movies when the kids are together having their adventures, but it doesn’t quite go to the vulgarity of the Pie franchise, at least not with the young-lings.Â It’s the adults who have the more vulgar humour hoisted upon them and for me at least that made this so much better.Â I never knew what Gary Cole’s penis looked like before this movie, and didn’t know, still don’t, if that was a question I wanted answered.Â But here we are, The Midnight Caller, I know what your knob looks like.Â Cena has his share of moments too, and I’m never going to get involved in a chugging competition with a teenager again, which means my Saturday nights are free from now on.

Blockers, or to give it the full title Cock Blockers, is a fine comedy where you forgive as much as you laugh.Â Many years ago I went to see American Pie on the first day that it opened in Ireland, and I laughed as much then as I did with this.Â The younger cast members are perfectly placed as the children of their adult co-stars.Â This would still be the kind of comedy that I’d want to watch time and time again, I would happily pay to see it in a cinema with my own cash, but there are a few problems with it too.Â I would have liked to see a less predictable ending and the coming out storyline felt as though it was ham-fisted in.Â But as I said, you forgive because you laugh, and that is a good stance to have for a film and life.

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