House Party Non-Spoiler review

Directed By Calmatic

Starring – Jacob Latimore, Tosin Cole, DC Young Fly

The Plot – Aspiring club promoters and best buds Damon (Cole) and Kevin (Latimore) are barely keeping things together. Out of money, down on their luck and about to lose the roofs over their heads, and freshly fired from their low-lift jobs as house cleaners, the pair needs a huge windfall to make their problems go away. In a ‘what the hell?’ move, they decide to host the party of the year at an exclusive mansion, the site of their last cleaning job, which just happens to belong to none other than LeBron James. No permission? No problem. What could go wrong?

Rated R for some violence, drug use, sexual material and pervasive language

(1) House Party – Official Trailer Starring Jacob Latimore – YouTube

POSITIVES

Throughout 32 years involving six films, “House Party” finally receives the remake treatment, and while much about the execution of this finished product remains suspect, there are a few elements that work surprisingly well when compared to its superior predecessors. The first is between the friendship of Damon and Kevin, harvesting a hearty underlining layer to their unique dynamic, which not only imbeds an endearing sappy and sentimental side to the often crudely dominating personality of the film, but also offers Cole and Latimore their most hefty and compelling work between them, building the bond of their relationship before the movie goes bonkers with its presence. Speaking of which, I found the last twenty minutes of this film to easily be its strongest, where it trades in conventionalism and predictability for a story direction that flies off of the rails fast. Without spoiling anything, I will say that the duo of friends do eventually depart their party for another, and while in their new location find themselves extremely vulnerable to a universal conspiracy theory that brings some fun and exciting elements of expression to Calmatic’s directing that makes us wonder what might’ve been had this script valued the random and sporadic chaos that made the original film a cultural classic. The setting is also a vast improvement from its predecessors, based entirely on the strange sight gags of Lebron James’ tech savvy household granting a combination of stakes and realty vulnerability to the proceedings. In the previous films, the carnage felt almost non-existent, but here there’s clearly concise evidence of long-term structural damage, solidifying a realistic approach to a party with so many attendees.

NEGATIVES

The 2023 incarnation of “House Party” feels like the kind of straight to streaming sequel that we could often avoid paying for, thanks to the littany of apps happy to fill content, but one here that has somehow made the jump to theaters despite much of its aspects bringing underwhelming returns to the forefront. For starters, the characters aren’t even half as compelling or sincere as their thirty-year old counterparts, instead passing off this awfully obvious hip lingo and loudly abrasive personalities that make even 95 minutes with them a chore to sit through. On top of this, the humor reaches embarassing levels of failure due to the try-hard emphasis of the deliveries lacking the confidence to pull from such childishly immature material. It’s the kind of conversations that not only feel overstuffed with meandered foreshadowing and ideas, which will obviously resonate somewhere in the distance of the developments, or they wouldn’t of been mentioned in the first place, but also these bitterly outdated punchlines, which makes the film feel like it was written in the 90’s, instead of trying to emulate it. Humor is subjective, so this is probably the weakest in my laundry list of problems with the film, but for my own personal taste, very little succesfully landed, and what did never exceeded anything beyond a momentary chuckle for the ironies of a development that weren’t always the intended target. On top of stale humor, the script itself just really isn’t that good, whether in the build-up of the characters’ and their respective conflicts, or the party itself, which essentially becomes a drinking game of one-off cameos that add little to no merit for their summoning. I can understand this being a big party at Lebron James’ house, so them attending does feel believable, but when their appearances are saddled with these heavily-intended lines of dialogue echoing who they are like a Saturday Night Live opening credits crawl, it starts to feel tediously padding, outlining a deeper problem of shallow depth within the screenplay that can’t even wrap up all of its conflicts on-screen to reward audience investment and patience accordingly. Because of such, it’s almost like the film grows weaker during scenes in and around the party in question, halting the progress on all respective narratives for music video style cinematography and substance that has its heart and head distracted in the many vantage points of the party that add nothing to the subplots they’re accommodating. Finally, while I can credit Calmatic for instilling a refreshing vibe of throwback in everything from the old New Line Cinema logo, to the musical score, to the bro comedy cinematography of the stylings, but the novelty of it all eventually wears off in some less than stellar cliches from the films it homages that it painfully brought along here. Stock instances with no sense of irony that made the film feel derivative include a clothes-changing montage, several ill-timed cutaway gags, sound designs of records scratching involved in the various joke deliveries, and random plot points summoning out of nowhere because the script requires them to. They all eviscerate the comforting warmth of the homage, all the while condemning this film from ever finding a fitting voice of its own to even think about competing with the original trio of films.

OVERALL

Like a party put together by friends, “House Party” begins harmless enough, before becoming a drunken mess with far too much to clean up along the way. Though the film does succeed on a couple aspects better than its superior original film, the underwhelming, underwritten returns eventually start to stack, leading to a disengaging experience that feels right at home with its January release date.

My Grade: 4/10 or D-