Release Date: June 15, 2018
Cast: Jeremy Renner, Annabelle Wallis, Isla Fisher, Jake Johnson, Ed Helms, Jon Hamm, Rashida Jones, Hannibal Buress, Leslie Bibb
Studio: New Line Cinema, Broken Road Productions
Distributor: Warner Bros. Pictures
IMDB | Wikipedia | RT
There are a lot of things lately that are just 100% pure 2018 mood. I’m talking pseudo-Dada, absurdist chaos. The kind of dark, niche cybersecurity humor of giving out souvenir flash drives at the North Korean Summit. The revisionist history of Berenstein Bears actually being the Berenstain Bears all this time (a vintage 2016/2017 revelation, but you get my drift). The darkest timeline.
I’m here to tell you that Tag is the antidote to the 2018 mood.
Hakuna-Matata, we are here to watch grown men get paid to act like children. No taxpayer dollars required.
Tag is so good that you almost forget that they had to CGI Jeremy Renner’s arms for nearly the entire movie. (Fun fact: he broke them doing a stunt with a lot of chairs on day 2 of the shoot.)
The movie follows a group of five friends and Isla Fisher as they play the most epic game of tag ever, based on a real-life group of friends from a Wall Street Journal story.
Ever since they were children, these guys have been playing the same, perpetual game of tag. For the month of May, they orchestrate elaborate stunts, disguises, and tactical schemes to tag and avoid being tagged. Complete with written and verbal amendments, the goal of the game is to avoid being ‘It.’ The loser lives in infamy for an entire year until the game starts again.
When the friends learn about Jeremy Renner’s upcoming May wedding, they all fly out to try and tag him before he retires from the game. Renner’s record is perfect: in over 20 years, he’s never been tagged.
Tag is an hour and forty minutes of laugh out loud, escapist fun. The entire theater was rollicking throughout the movie — it starts strong and it maintains its momentum. I never soured on the gag, and the movie was never gimmicky, even when it ran just a touch too long. It’s exuberant, feel-good fun, and it transforms an otherwise flimsy idea and anchors it to a foundation of friendship to make a really strong film.
Everything from the cast to the script is orchestrated for maximum laughs — the ‘R’ rating is perfect for potty-mouthed, expletive-laced physical comedy. Isla Fisher as the too-intense wife who hasn’t been initiated into the game but plays the eager accomplice brings so much light and joy to the screen, which is then balanced by the rest of the ensemble crew, notably Burress’ deadpan comedy and Renner’s suave, Bond-esque mastermind calculations.
There are very few things that don’t work in this movie. The only thing that seemed in poor taste was the joke about waterboarding Thomas Middleditch. Other than that misstep, Tag is an absolutely absurd movie and, dare I say, the absolute “It” movie of the summer.
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