Why Him?

There doesn't seem to be much effort behind Why Him?, an R-rated comedy that resorts to redundancy when wit runs short. Unfortunately, that happens pretty early in the film.

The script by director John Hamburg (I Love You Man), Ian Helfer and actor Jonah Hill (who chose not to appear in the final film) uses profanity the way most of us use prepositions. It almost makes viewers wish there were more dirty words at the actors and screenwriters' disposal. It gets old hearing Oscar-nominated star James Franco dropping F-bombs every few seconds.

In Why Him?, Franco plays the warm-hearted but obviously foul-mouthed tech mogul Laird Mayhew who has won the heart of the much younger Stanford student Stephanie Fleming (Zoey Deutch, Everybody Wants Some!!).

Her straight-laced father, Ned (Bryan Cranston), might be happy that she has found a financially stable beau, but nothing else in Laird's life is stable or ordinary.

He sports tats all over his flesh, including ones of Stephanie and her whole clan despite the fact that the rest of them still haven't met him. He also goes to bizarre extremes to go paperless (there's no TP in the huge house) and his right-hand man (Keegan-Michael Key) regularly attacks him so that he can learn to defend himself against would-be assailants. (It's a rip-off of Kato and Inspector Clouseau's battles in the Pink Panther movies, but acknowledging the theft doesn't make it any more amusing.)

Initially, watching Cranston and Franco make each other squirm is funny, but Hamburg and the screenwriters can't figure out where to take the potentially volatile relationship from there. Laird is crass and eccentric, but he doesn't change as the film progresses. Eventually, one wonders why Stephanie doesn't resent him the way her father does.

There are some bits of juicy comic potential that Hamburg either ignored or left on the cutting room floor. For example, Ned's Detroit-based printing company is hemorrhaging cash, while Laird lives in a palatial, high-tech estate. Playing off of Ned's jealousy could have been funnier than seeing Key and Franco fight for the third time.

Occasionally, casting the multiple-Emmy winning actor helps. It's more fun to watch Cranston quietly seething or hiding his disgust than it is to watch Franco preening. The latter has played roles like Laird more effectively in movies like Pineapple Express, where he was given more to do than simply behave like a bull in a china shop.

Cranston starred in sitcoms like Malcolm in the Middle before Breaking Bad gave him the role of a lifetime. He's such a talented performer he doesn't need writers as good as Vince Gilligan. But he needs better than this.

MovieStyle on 12/23/2016