I’m rarely jealous at the movies. I don’t actually wish I had super powers, perform magic spells, or could be fast and furious. But friendships that drift away needlessly do bug me, especially at this point in history where everyone is just a touch away.
Tag is not a movie about saving lives, finding higher truths, or being in love with a teen vampire; it’s just a movie about some fellas who never gave up their childhood connection. Does it matter that the connection is rooted in game most children grow out of long before middle school? It wouldn’t to me.
The basic premise of this film is kinda adorable: five fully-grown middle-aged men are playing the same game of Tag they started when they were prepubescent. When you play a game for thirty (ahem), ok, forty years, you think you might be good at it by now, right? Well … anybody who has seen me play ice hockey knows that the learning curve is much flatter for some people. Invention doesn’t stop Hoagie (Ed Helms), who is not above disguise or locking exits to quarry his prey. We are introduced to Hoagie applying for a janitorial position just to Tag Fortune 500 bigwig Bob (John Hamm). Cornered while giving an interview to the Wall Street Journal on his company’s diabetes research, Bob fails to escape when the conference room glass proves stronger than the chair thrown at it.
Oh, this is how serious these guys are, huh? That’s rich. The interviewer (Annabelle Wallis) thinks so, too. Screw diabetes; I’m following this spate of grown man idiocy.
These guys don’t play Tag all year long, of course; they only ruin one month per annum, May. And if it weren’t clear already, this is an “anything goes” situation … and this is the year that Hoagie, Bob, Chilli (Jake Johnson), and Kevin (Hannibal Buress) finally get “never been tagged” Jerry (Jeremy Renner). Why are they so confident to do the undoable? Because this May, Jerry is getting married and he can’t seem to “altar” those plans.
I know you’re gonna think I’m kidding here, but Jeremy Renner shows more super powers as Jerry than he has in seventeen Avengers films playing actual super hero Hawkeye. Alien invaders? Pfft. Just try keeping this guy from bowling night and you’ll see some powers emerge. Literally untouchable and extremely calculating for all the wrong reasons, Jerry makes an awesome “villain” in Tag. This is his best role since The Hurt Locker and there isn’t a close second.
In fact, this entire cast gets an A+. And I’d be remiss in not mentioning the female witnesses to the Tag sp
ectacle: Leslie Bibb establishing her partnership as Jeremy’s fiancée, Rashida Jones as the long-lost divider between Bob and Chilli, and especially Isla Fisher as Hoagie’s rabid gung-ho spouse.
Tag isn’t rocket science, a threat to civilization, or the biopic of somebody famous. I’d probably enjoy the movie were it any of these things, but the fact that it’s scope is deliberately small makes -paradoxically- the action that much more compelling; this really could be you and your friends (with some imagination and a lot of free time). The stories we care about don’t have to involve monumental events, just ones we can relate to.
Not it.
In touch with puerile emotion
Have five men found a youth potion?
With this inner child
A case must be filed
Haphephobia* can be quite a notion
Rated R, 100 Minutes
Director: Jeff Tomsic
Writer: Rob McKittrick, Mark Steilen
Genre: Tomfoolery among people old enough to have used the term “tomfoolery”
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who are sick of saving the universe and just want a good laugh
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: “This is stupid. Grow up.”
*fear of touch
