Review

Blockers

Sam (Gideon Adlon), Julie (Kathryn Newton) and Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan) make a pact in Blockers, the teen sex comedy that marks the directorial debut of Kay Cannon (writer of the Pitch Perfect series).
Sam (Gideon Adlon), Julie (Kathryn Newton) and Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan) make a pact in Blockers, the teen sex comedy that marks the directorial debut of Kay Cannon (writer of the Pitch Perfect series).

Despite a cornucopia of gross-out jokes, Blockers is a surprisingly touching look at parents coming to grips with their offspring's fresh adulthood.

Freshman director Kay Cannon, best known for writing the Pitch Perfect movies, manages to make horrendous behavior parsable. Parental concern can lead people in their 40s to make decisions far more irrational than their teenage children.

Blockers

87 Cast: Leslie Mann, Ike Barinholtz, John Cena, Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan, Gideon Adlon, Graham Phillips, Gina Gershon, Miles Robbins, Jimmy Bellinger, Jake Picking, Sarayu Blue, Ramona Young

Director: Kay Cannon

Rating: R, for crude and sexual content, and language throughout, drug content, teen partying, and some graphic nudity

Running time: 1 hour, 42 minutes

Lisa (Leslie Mann), Mitchell (John Cena) and Hunter (Ike Barinholtz) became emotional wrecks watching their 6-year-old daughters start kindergarten. A dozen years later, the anxiety increases as Julie (Kathryn Newton), Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan) and Sam (Gideon Adlon) prepare for prom night.

Julie has already put her mother, Lisa, on edge by preparing to attend UCLA instead of a Chicago school. She also thinks that the prom is an ideal time to shed her virginity. Her besties agree and even announce the pact on social media.

While they may not be fluent in cryptic emoji, its not hard for the parents to decode the hashtag "#SexPact2018." Lisa and overprotective Mitchell might not know what an eggplant means in text speak, but they can read.

Lisa became a mother because she chased her dreams only to discover that following bands and dodgy boyfriends isn't a sustainable activity. While the girls discover that alcohol and drugs cease to be fun when taken in excess, their parents wind up making even bigger fools of themselves in their quest to stop the potential couplings.

Screenwriting brother Brian and Jim Kehoe appear to have been ordered to meet a quota of misbehaviors, but to their credit, they manage to find a few forms of chemical and carnal recreation that aren't excessively familiar.

Thankfully, Mann, Cena and Barinholtz are willing to be as vulnerable as they are outrageous. Hunter is strangely sympathetic for a guy who has bungled his life up to this point. His ineptitude is counterbalanced by his desire to give Sam a prom night she couldn't have otherwise. He's also able to accept her lesbianism better than her friends or mother might.

Pro wrestler Cena obviously knows his way around a gym (that's a prerequisite for a pro wrestler), but he's also unafraid to become a complete and unapologetic fool if the material requires it. He's also able to convincingly register insecurities that a lot of full-time actors can't.

Cannon handles the shifts in tone effortlessly. As fun as it is to watch alleged adults find amusingly implausible ways to shed their clothes, one wonders what she could have accomplished if she had been as subtle as some of the emoji the girls employ in their messages to one another.

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Lisa (Leslie Mann) and Hunter (Ike Barinholtz) discover their daughters’ pact to lose their virginity at prom in Kay Cannon’s Blockers.

MovieStyle on 04/06/2018

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