Bryan Cranston goes toe-to-toe with James Franco for the heart of a mutual love, in “Why Him?”. While visiting their eldest daughter Stephanie (Zoey Deutch), Ned Fleming (Bryan Cranston) and his wife Barb (Megan Mullally), along with their 15-year old son Scott (Griffin Gluck), are introduced to Stephanie’s wealthy and famous entrepreneur boyfriend, Laird Mayhew (James Franco). Laird’s vulgar, gregarious, and blunt personality is slightly overwhelming for Barb and Scott, but causes Ned to downright despise him. However, Stephanie insists that he’s a nice person, and that he makes her happy. But when Laird reveals he plans to propose to Stephanie in only five days, the race to prove himself worthy of her love so Ned can give them his blessing begins. Laird goes out of his way to win over Barb and Scott, while Ned schemes to make sure Laird goes down in flames. “Why Him?” is written and directed by John Hamburg, and is rated R for strong language and sexual material.

For all of its A-list talent and Holiday hijinks, “Why Him?” is more of the same from a yearly Christmas offering of comedic coal in the stocking of disappointment. This is a movie that flounders away countless opportunities to be something more than just toilet humor, but gladly settles for that distinction around every corner. As far as Christmas comedies go, this was one of the very worst that I have ever seen, joining a bronze ranking alongside travesties like “Jack and Jill” and “Christmas Vacation 2”. At 105 minutes, the movie is simply too long to ever get fluently moving. Evidence even suggests that this movie has a longer cut sitting around somewhere because most of the best lines from the trailer don’t exist in this final cut. Instead, we are subjected to a story that is every bit as predictable as it is raunchily bland on humor thrills. My theater, which was half full, was mostly dead on reactions for the entirety of this film, a signal that some people have had enough with this brand of humor. Whether it’s failing punchlines or improv that goes on for far too long, this movie has you covered to fear every Kwanza for the rest of time, and a lot of that reason is the phoned in performances from the people forced to endure this tragedy.

If I was going to get anything out of this movie, I was at least hoping for an enjoyable rivalry between Cranston and Franco. The problem with investing in their characters is many things, but most importantly that they are paying tribute to movies like “Meet the Parents” and “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” that did it much better. Franco’s character is utterly detestable. Sure he’s rich and good looking, but his bottom of the barrel humor and language to people he is supposed to respect makes me question a mental capacity that the movie just never touches on. The film tries to shed this layer for a sensitive and caring side of Franco midway through, but I’m just not buying it. The chemistry between he and Deutsch just doesn’t exist, and the two love interests flail around like brother and sister for a majority of the movie. As for Cranston, there’s very little material for him to work with that doesn’t paint him as a raving lunatic. We’ve all seen this angle frequently where the father tries to change his daughter’s mind, but here it comes off as methodically chaotic. If neither of the two male leads offer a semblance of respectability, how is the audience supposed to invest in them? The only positives that I took away were Megan Mullaly, as well as Keegan-Michael Key who once again steals another movie from top-billers. Key’s Swedish delivery leaves a little more to be desired, but his reactionary quick quips signal that his heart is the only one in the right place, and I was so glad that his character’s humor never needed the below the belt yawners that this movie delved in.

There are a lot of problems with the material, but the predictable factor hinders them further to being practically useless at every pitch. The worst kind of comedy is a predictable one, and movies like these have been happy to place a few obvious setups throughout their screenplay or setting, and I easily telegraphed these from miles away. Not to give away much, but if you see a huge twenty foot bowl containing a dead moose who’s being kept preserved by his own urine, what do you think is going to happen by the end of the movie? I don’t need to even give away the answer because it’s practical, predictable and juvenile to the kinds of things were working with. As if this wasn’t enough, the movie takes any opportunity it can to dumb the audience down by instilling a curse word every other line in the script. Believe it or not, it is possible to make an R-rated comedy without literally dicking around with the script, but you would never know that because the film waters down the power of their impact by overusing early in the film. After ten minutes with Franco’s character, I was reaching for the exit, and a lot of that reasoning is from his delivery in dialogue that doesn’t feel natural in the slightest. Nobody talks like this, and if they do it’s futher proof to distance yourself from that particularly classless person.

I mentioned earlier that some of the improv lasted ages, and that’s because this movie takes the unfortunate task of explaining every modern joke in the same way that it does to Cranston’s 50-something character. That’s right, we’re given the disposition of being treated like the slowest gatherer of information here, a fact made even more funny considering most of Franco’s audiences are Millenials who wrote mind-numbingly awful material so someone like Franco could steal it and use it a year later in a movie to seem cool and hip. Listen, Franco is 38 years old. At this point, it might be best to give up the stoner role that illuminates him in the light of hipster fossil who refuses to leave the party when all of its guests tell him he should. Then there’s the idea to repeat the same five jokes that the movie has a hundred and ten times, and it soon should seem clear how this movie got a nearly two hour run time that clearly over-exhausts a story this one-note and simple. A comedy this thinly layered should get 90 minutes and nothing more. With a quicker run time, I might not have felt the urgency to leave the theater as much, but this film’s plotting pacing will have you screaming “WE GOT IT” in even the biggest lovers of toilet humor.

Overall, “Why Him?” is a question that somebody should’ve asked about this critic as to why I have to continue reviewing this mess year after year. It’s rarely funny, wastes two charismatic male leads that sport two of the truly most wretched of sides for our female lead, and settles for more of the juvenile humor that stoners crafted in a foggy haze after somebody told them that they too could be screenwriters. This is one case where the annoying trailer matches the movie perfectly, and there will be zero cries of false advertising on this one.

3/10