Tag Review
Myla Tosatto
I love a good summer frivolous movie. Sure, dinosaurs and superheroes get all the love, but sign me up for a laugh riot comedy anytime the temp reaches 90 degrees or more. What is better than sitting in a cool theater eating Milk Duds while giggling your fanny off? NOTHING! Nothing is better. That’s why it pleases me so much to tell you that Tag is a genuinely funny movie. Grown people slapping each other silly and talking like sailors and looking like Jon Hamm? Come on. It’s a no-brainer. This post contains commission links.
Tag is about a group of friends that have been playing the game for 30 years. Hoagie (Ed Helms) and his wife, Anna (Isla Fisher), round up the old gang Callahan (Jon Hamm), Chilli (Jake Johnson) and Sable (Hannibal Buress). Their plan is to take on the undisputed champ of tag, Jerry (Jeremy Renner) on his wedding day. In thirty years, Jerry has never been tagged and he has no desire to be “it”. So much so, that it gets a little wild. Perhaps a little too wild? I’m not judging you, Jerry and fiancée Susan (Leslie Bibb), but. . .
The movie is based on a true story (yes, you read that correctly). One assumes that the game they are playing isn’t so much about the actual game of tag itself, but about the friendships that the game has kept alive. The movie does a great job of portraying this.
Though the tag players incorrectly credit Benjamin Franklin with the George Bernhard Shaw quote, they are correct in its message: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” Let this fluffy summer film teach us all a lesson (see? even the occasional goofy movie can have a great message).
P.S. DO NOT leave the theater when the movie is over or even when we get to see the real dudes that played Tag for 30 years. STAY. Hawkeye didn’t get his end cap in the latest Avengers movie, but he more than makes up for it here.
Purchase TAG tickets today from Fandango.
The cast includes Ed Helms, Jake Johnson, Annabelle Wallis, Hannibal Buress, Isla Fisher, Rashida Jones, Leslie Bibb, Jon Hamm, Jeremy Renner
One month every year, five highly competitive friends hit the ground running for a no-holds-barred game of tag – risking their necks, their jobs and their relationships to take on another down. This time, the game coincides with the wedding of the only undefeated player. What should be an easy target soon becomes an all-out war as he knows they’re coming to get him.
RATING: Rated R for language throughout, crude sexual content, drug use and brief nudity.