Say Will Ferrell and every instinct suggests that I should run the other way, but add Mark Wahlberg to the cast and suddenly I am intrigued. Sean Anders directs Brian Burns’s story, which begins with an interesting premise but does not pack in enough satire into its contrived and predictable screenplay.
Brad (Ferrell), a timid and overly accommodating radio executive is stepfather to Sarah’s young children. Sharing duties with his working wife (Linda Cardellini), Brad is determined to be the best step-dad he can. Just when Brad finally seems to be transitioning from “dad” to “father”, their lives go into a spin with the arrival of the free-spirited, hunky real father to Dylan and Megan. Sarah describes her first husband, Dusty (Wahlberg) as what you would get if Mick Jagger and Jesse James had a child.
Dusty is everything Brad is not – strong, cool, handy around the house, confident, manipulative and conniving. Expectedly, a large part of the film revolves around Brad playing right into Dusty’s game plan of preying on Brad’s insecurities. During the craziness of the two men fighting to win over the children, Sarah benignly stands by and lets her husband be mocked and demeaned. Only much later do the two men realise it is possible to co-parent and work off each others' strengths.
This is arguably Ferrell’s least annoying role, but equally and arguably, Wahlberg is at his least attractive. The duo, along with the mischievous Thomas Haden Church (as Brad’s boss), deliver a few funny scenes, but there is little they can do with the mostly pedestrian material, which includes a highly embarrassing scene of Brad’s breakdown, a frightening stray dog and a random handyman who inexplicably moves into Brad and Sarah’s home. This one is clearly only for die-hard Wahlberg-Ferrell fans.
