Staying in #2 with The Bye Bye Man and Why Him?

The Bye Bye Man

Three students move into a creepy house and the countdown is on.

5,4,3,2,1, and yes, they have managed to release some evil into the world.

Well played.

Now how many more clichés can they deliver?

The answer is that they leave no stone unturned in covering every single one that you could think of.

There could be some worth in it if there had been a tongue in cheek element added, or maybe if they had went over the top with jarring shock scares, but they didn’t.

It is one of those movies that fans of the genre will sit through and at the end of the credits start asking themselves why they bothered.

Every ten minutes you think that you will hang in there to see if it picks up, and then it ends.

It ends with another cliché too.

You know the one. Where they leave it open ended for The Bye Bye Man 2.

The movie is really just a reinterpretation of films like Candyman from the nineties, but as there have been so any of them there isn’t that much left to explore. The only option for anyone attempting to cover the same ground would be to make it bigger and better than anything that has come before.

And on that premise this movie just doesn’t do that.

Bargain bin fodder in a few months time, or maybe sooner.

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Why Him?

With John Hamburg, the writer of Meet The Parents, Meet the Fockers and Little Fockers, directing it’s no surprise that the same themes are revisited in Why Him?

Those of very different people being thrown together in the name of love.

And while repetition can start to deliver limited enjoyment it has to be said that he hasn’t scraped the bottom of the barrel yet.

He doesn’t seem to be close at all.

The unfiltered character of Laird Mayhew that James Franco plays is hilarious, and the stressed father Ned Fleming covered by Bryan Cranston is very easily empathised with.

I would presume that every man that has a daughter would literally want to beat Franco to a pulp.

Then get some paddles on his chest and revive him just to do it all again.

I certainly did.

However scene stealer Keegan-Michael Key as Gustav is the unheralded star of the show.

As a foil to James Franco he excels, and in what is really a minor role he ultimately carries a great deal of the story on his shoulders.

He is the conduit for so many scenes to slip into another that without him there would feel like something was missing.

Keegan-Michael Key

It is not beyond the realms of imagination that John Hamburg could take the Gustav character and make him the lead in a follow up as the role lends itself to being transplanted into another story rather easily.

Truth be told I think that premise would be a more attractive one rather than him extending the Why Me? cast into a sequel.

So more Gustav please?

A word of warning now.

For those who are maybe thinking of sitting down to watch it with young kids as a family affair.

Don’t!

You will just have too much to explain to them too early in life.

It’s not worth it.

At least let them get to their teenage years and then you can laugh at their discomfort.

KISS fans may want to have a little peak at this one too as there’s a rather good cameo from Paul and Gene in it.

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