Tag

UK Release Date. 29 June 2018
Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 40 mins
Director. Jeff Tomsic
Cast. Leslie Bibb, Hannibal Buress, Isla Fisher, Jon Hamm, Ed Helms, Jake Johnson, Rashida Jones, Jeremy Renner, Annabelle Wallis.
Rating. 43%

Review.

Jeff Tomsic's feature-length directorial debut, Tag is based on a Wall Street Journal article entitled 'It takes planning, caution to avoid being it' which details the exploits of a group of friends who for the past 20+ years have played a game of tag.

The film recounts how the fictional friends throw themselves into a no-holds-barred, month-long game of tag each May (seemingly for the past 30 years). They ambush each other at home and at work. At important milestones in their lives - births and funerals - no setting or circumstance is off-limit. And whoever is tagged last before the midnight 31 May deadline has to endure the indignity of being 'it' for the next 11 months.

Tomsic has assembled an impressive cast to portray the group of friends - Ed Helms, Jon Hamm, Jake Johnson, Hannibal Buress and Jeremy Renner - but the characters are under-developed, one-dimensional and universally grating. 

More importantly, whilst the tradition may make for a particularly delightful feature article in The Wall Street Journal or a temporarily distracting series of Instagram Reels, turning the exploits of the friends into a feature-length film is too much of a stretch. At its best, Tag is an easy (or perhaps lazy) celebration of White Male American Dumbness [one that only includes an African-American in the cast to mask how much of a celebration of White Male American Dumbness the film is]. At its worst, Tomsic includes a woefully ill-advised and wildly misjudged comedic tangent in the final act that renders the film actively distasteful. 

For the most part, Tag is neither bad nor good, but rather, despite its unique storyline almost numbingly ordinary. Occasionally amusing but rarely funny. Competent rather than impressive.