Tropes of a raunchy sex comedy are mixed into a tamer tale about the clash between established family values and the often bereft behavior of the untethered newly wealthy. The result is an unpleasant botch that becomes an audience endurance contest. Bryan Cranston plays the owner of a money-losing commercial printing operation in Michigan who, together with his wife (Megan Mullally) and 15-year-old son (Griffin Gluck), travels to California to spend Christmas with his daughter (Zoey Deutch). What the visitors don’t know beforehand is that Deutch’s character is engaged to an immature, nearly feral gazillionaire who makes video games (James Franco). Director John Hamburg, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jonah Hill and Ian Helfer, expects the audience to revel in the tycoon’s antics, which include teaching his potential brother-in-law how to spout filth and getting his fiancee’s mother high on marijuana-laced brownies.
Watch out for: Fleeting rear nudity, drug use, crude sexual banter, including references to aberrant acts, scatological humor and pervasive rough language.
Rated: O, morally offensive; MPAA: R
