Movie Review: Blockers (2018)

I won’t give any plot spoilers not shown in the trailer. There really aren’t many spoilers to give as the plot is pretty obvious where it’s going.

Blockers is the directorial debut of Second City alumnus Kay Cannon. She wrote all three Pitch Perfect films, with the third one co-written by Mike White. Blockers stars Leslie Mann, Ike Barinholtz, John Cena, Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan and Gideon Adlon.

Julie (Kathryn Newton), Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan) and Sam (Gideon Adlon) have been friends since the first day of kindergarten. They decide together to lose their virginity on prom night. Each has an overprotective parent, who also met each other on that first day of school. The parents’ friendship has been more difficult to maintain. The three prying parents come across a group chat revealing their daughters’ sex pact and spend the rest of the film trying to stop their children from going through with it.

Movies like American Pie and Superbad have already told the story of high school boys trying to lose their virginity before graduation. This film switches it up to actually show the girls in the other half of this equation. Unlike the boys who are desperate, this is shown as a decision each girl makes for herself. They assume each of their chosen partners will go along with it. The film is also different in that the parents are part of the story. They are real people with their own problems. For a high school sex comedy, this isn’t really so much about the girls’ point of view as it’s really about the parents as they try to stop their daughters from having sex. In this way the film shows both the necessary other side of consensual sex but also the double standard when it comes to how teenage girls are unfairly treated when it comes to sexual promiscuity.

Much of the comedy comes from the parents, who all met because their overprotectiveness led them to accompany their children nearly to the front door of the school. This is a quick sequence that jumps right to prom night, saving the audience from sitting through scenes of the children growing up.

This is not the first sex comedy to show the woman’s side of the story. The To-Do List has already done a better version of such a movie from a woman’s perspective. This film explores different versions of the story. One girl starts to discover she is attracted to women. It is great to see her desire for someone of the same sex played out as heartfelt rather than for laughs.

The movie is not as terrible as I feared but also not really deserving of it’s 82% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s a laughable comedy with a refreshing point of view. But it seems to be going for a teenage or younger adult audience. In its attempt to appeal to this demographic it resorts to gross-out gags for laughs. Maybe that’s just to be expected from a modern comedy, but I’ve seen enough puke gags to just think it’s silly at this point. John Cena plays Mitchell. He was great in Trainwreck but I was doubtful about seeing him in a leading role. He turns out to be more than capable, at least in a role with two other more experienced actors. He’s not a lead actor on his own. His size and strength become the butt of their jokes, although there is no reason given for why he maintains such a physique. He’s oddly out of place in the group. A teenager accuses them of being undercover cops and states that Cena is the coppiest of cops. It was an obvious but great line that drew laughter from the audience. Cena is as overprotective a father as one could expect from a man who looks like him. The film uses his size to show his anger just enough without going so far as to make him one-dimensional.

Aimee Mann plays Lisa, a single mom who gave up any hope of a happy life to raise her daughter after an unplanned pregnancy. She and her daughter are the closest she can get to being part of a happy couple and her identity is about to ripped apart when her daughter leaves for college. In an odd type of vicariousness, she is determined to prevent her daughter from having sex and ruining her own life like her daughter ruined hers.

Ike Barinholtz is Hunter, a father who is sure his daughter won’t go through with the sex pact since he’s certain she is a lesbian. He’s actually the outlier, being under-involved in his daughter’s life. It takes witnessing only one kiss to bring out his overprotective side. After all, these are the same three who had to escort their children to the front door of the school. Mitchell’s wife Marcie (Sarayu Blue) shows a more liberal attitude towards their daughter’s sexuality.

The three daughters are great in their roles, but the comedy often seems to happen to them and around them. Despite Newton appearing to be the lead of the three, Viswanathan and Adlon have the best performances. Hopefully they each get a starring role in future film comedies. They appear to take their decision to lose their virginity kind of lightly, but unlike their parents, they actually put more thought into their decision as the night goes on.

The parents are the ones with all the real problems with sex. Hunter is divorced after cheating on his wife. Mitchell seems to go to great lengths to prevent his daughter from having any sort of romantic life. Lisa is so close to her daughter that she seems to have no room for a romantic life, for which she seems to blame her daughter.

Overall, I think the movie was alright. It drew laughs from the audience, which is really all one can ask from a sex comedy. It gets credit for taking a different angle. There still could be another movie made someday about high school girls with a sex pact. This movie is stolen by the adults in the film. I give it 3 out of 5 stars simply because it was engaging enough and had its funny moments, despite a few gross-out gags.