For a Netflix movie that was obviously reverse-engineered from its title, and even more obviously made by the director of “The Wrong Missy” (which streaming historians will remember as the 2020 comedy in which a tranquilized David Spade is constantly accosted by handjobs on a corporate retreat), Tyler Spindel’s “The Out-Laws” could be a hell of a lot worse.
Which isn’t to say people would have been happy to pay $20 to watch this Happy Madison write-off at their local AMC, but it’s not like any theatrical distributors are giving audiences the chance to watch Julie Hagerty and Richard Kind play a deceptively neurotic married couple who bicker about Dan Marino’s penis and the perils of “traveler’s diarrhea” (“it’s not just when I travel,” Kind’s character is quick to clarify).
And the Brownings aren’t even the renegade parents referred to by the film’s title. They might be a little kinkier than you’d expect, but they don’t read like the criminal type. If anything, they seem more like the kind of people who might have a goody-goody bank manager for a son. A bank manager like Owen, who the pathologically chipper Adam DeVine embodies with all the energy of a human Build-a-Bear (to paraphrase one of the movie’s better throwaway lines).
Owen is about to get married to the radiant local yoga teacher (an underused Nina Dobrev), and both of them are irked by the fact that the bride’s mom and dad won’t be at the wedding — and Owen has never even met them. He and Parker think that’s because her parents have spent the past few years embedded with a remote South American tribe, but the truth of the matter is that Billy and Lilly McDermott are actually the infamous “Ghost Bandits,” who’ve been on the lam since before Parker was born.
From the moment that Pierce Brosnan and Ellen Barkin show up covered in black leather and oozing “this is what broad comedies think criminals are like” attitude, it’s clear that they’re not going to get along with their future son-in-law. The only silver lining is that the kid has a cool bank they can rob, which might come in handy when trying to pay back the $5 million they owe their psychopathic ex-partner, Rehan (“Never Have I Ever” star Poorna Jagannathan, having giddy fun as a kill-happy crime lord).
Owen even gets drunk enough to tell them about the voice-activated vault trigger he designed, which only pops open if it hears him sing the lyrics to Blink-182’s “All the Small Things” (vaguely amusing in an “I also remember that song” sort of way, which is really all this movie aspires to). The Ghost Bandits go through with the heist, Owen immediately figures out they were behind it, and awkwardness ensues.
Mileage will vary when it comes to DeVine’s antics, and “Workaholics” fans might appreciate a plot-clinching cameo from one of his longtime collaborators, but the muggy comedian’s bushy-tailed suck-up schtick can’t help but seem flat and forced in a film that refuses to push against it. Violent in spurts but wholly absent the heart of darkness that helps catalyze DeVine’s chipmunk screen presence in a show like “The Righteous Gemstones,” “The Out-Laws” is far too slapdash and first-drafty to bother with balancing out the right tone. Spindel adopts more of a “shoot in 10 directions and see what sticks” approach, which allows for a wild swerve toward high-octane action during the second half of the story, but also leaves you with the nagging sense that most of its characters are in completely different movies.
If “The Out-Laws” is passable compared to most of Netflix’s original comedy fare, that’s because all of those different movies have their moments. Lil Rel Howery and Laci Mosley kick things off on the right foot as Owen’s co-workers at the bank, the two comedy vets landing just about every joke they make at their manager’s expense. Lauren Lapkus — thewrong Missy, herself — is wonderfully deranged as Owen’s hyper-sexual rival, and Jackie Sandler ensures that her cameo as the perma-drunk owner of a vegan cake store is never as wasted as the character she’s playing. Michael Rooker’s part can feel a bit tacked on, but even his cuckolded detective eventually gets enough backstory and business to pull his weight. Adam Sandler’s old comedies had the same generosity when it came to their supporting roles, and it’s nice to see his production company continuing that tradition.
Barkin and Brosnan are palpably too good for a project that was clearly pitched as content, but there’s something to be said for watching pros playing pros. Spry and slaphappy, both actors split the difference between “What the shit am I doing here?” and “I might as well have some fun with this.” And that shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise: Barkin has always been an underrated and off-kilter comic dynamo, and Brosnan… well, if he can sell a line like “I thought Christmas only comes once a year,” he can definitely grimace his way through a tandem skydiving scene that ends with him shouting “You’re pulling on my cock!”
Like so much of “The Out-Laws,” Brosnan and Barkin are both a little better than they need to be, and also a lot better than their material demands. Spindel adopts the same approach; if the movie’s 87-minute running time (not including credits) might feel like an eternity if the action setpieces were as tossed off as some of its humor, its, but the big second-act car chase is well-staged enough to pump some much-needed energy into the humdrum plot resolution that follows. It all builds to a celebratory dance scene that spills over into the end credits, by which point Netflix has already squeezed the movie into the top-left corner of your screen and started a countdown to the trailer for its new WHAM! documentary. It’s the rare case of a comedy getting exactly the ending it deserves.
Grade: C
“The Out-Laws” is now streaming on Netflix.
