Film reviews: Daddy’s Home with Will Ferrell; The Good Dinosaur

Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg team up for a family romp that starts off with a good idea.

From left, Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg and Linda Cardellini in Daddy’s Home.

It’s that time of year, with the long school break stretching on and on, when a lot of parents start to wonder why they are sweating at a petting zoo rather than cooling off at an adults-only ­resort somewhere in the Pacific. Or perhaps that’s just me. In any event, this week’s holiday films, each with parenting at their heart, might put them back on the straight and narrow.

Poor Brad Whitaker (Will Ferrell) in Daddy’s Home wants nothing more than to be a dad. “Anyone can be a father, but not everyone has the patience and devotion to be a dad,’’ he tells us. The distinction is important because a dentist’s misdirected X-ray machine has left Brad borderline sterile.

Yet while fatherhood is unlikely, he has a shot a dadhood. His newish wife Sara (Linda Cardellini) has two primary school age children from a previous marriage, Megan (Scarlett Estevez) and Dylan (Owen Vaccaro).

In an amusing opening sequence, Brad marvels at Megan’s family drawing, in which he is not only separated from the others but has a knife in his head. “I love how you have done my hair,’’ he coos. “That’s poop,’’ she replies.

However, as the film proper starts it seems the kids are warming to Brad and there’s a chance of “finally becoming a family’’. Then AC/DC’s Thunderstruck announcesthe arrival of Dusty Mayron (a particularly pumped-up Mark Wahlberg), Sarah’s ex and the children’s father. He’s on a motorbike and oozes rock ’n’ roll cool and daredevil charm. It’s not clear what he does for a living but it’s possible he’s involved in black ops.

Beige-clad Brad, who works at a smooth jazz radio station, is intimidated but want to makes friends (who wouldn’t?). Wanting to warn him about Dusty’s true colours, Sara says, “It’s like Jesse James and Mick Jagger had a baby.” I suppose anything goes these days, but good luck explaining that one to younger viewers.

From this point we are in a dad-off between reliable stepdad Brad and unreliable dad Dusty, each rather shamelessly manipulating the kids to win their affections. Dusty also wants Sara back. There is some laugh-out-loud physical comedy, such as when Brad tries to ride Dusty’s motorbike, but there are also some oddly inappropriate moments, such as when Brad gets drunk and violent at a basketball game.

Perhaps such missteps are due to director Sean Anders wanting to push the boundaries of what is basically a domestic comedy. He’s best known as the writer of the successful 2013 crime caper We’re the Millers, in which a small-time dealer creates a fake family to smuggle dope across the border from Mexico, drug lords and federal agents in pursuit.

Wahlberg is easy to watch as always and Ferrell, who is at least a head taller than his co-star, makes a good fist of pretending not to be. This is their second collaboration following the 2010 action spoof The Other Guys, and there are times when they seem desperate to turn it into a buddy movie. Hannibal Buress provides comic ­diversion as a local tradesman and Thomas Haden Church brings his trademark weirdness to the role of Brad’s boss.

Daddy’s Home, scripted by Brian Burns, who wrote a lot of the television show Entourage, starts with a good idea: the difference between being a father and being a dad, between biology and responsibility, but doesn’t do a lot with it. It’s an amusing enough Friday night film. And the takeout for parents? Well, you’ll probably realise you are doing a lot better than either of these bozos.

In contrast, the father in Disney’s The Good Dinosaur, the latest 3-D animated feature from Pixar, is very good indeed.

Henry (voiced by Jeffrey Wright) is the noble, brave, hardworking head of a corn-farming, chicken-rearing family of apatosauruses (the huge, long-necked plant-eaters that were called brontosauruses when I was a kid). His calm, determined wife is Ida (Frances McDormand) and their three kids are Buck, Libby and Arlo, the runt of the litter and star of the show.

When Henry meets with misfortune in an early scene that sets up the main story of Arlo discovering what he’s made of, it’s a moment that brings a lump to the throat, no mean feat when you are watching a film starring cartoonish talking dinosaurs.

Which brings me to an important point: if you have a little dinosaur expert in your life, don’t let them tell you this film is not for them. Mine refused to see it with me. Talking dinosaurs? You’ve got to be kidding, Dad.

Well, the clever set-up provides a reasonable explanation: 65 million years ago, the asteroid missed. Given that, who is to say the dinosaurs would not have continued to evolve, developed language and started up agricultural businesses? And that humans, when they eventually knuckle-dragged into view, would not have been dumb beasts by comparison? Now he knows this, my tyro palaeontologist is cracking his neck to see it.

Arlo (voiced by child actor Raymond Ochoa) becomes separated from his family after he goes in pursuit of a primitive boy (Jack Bright) who is stealing the family’s crops. Once they overcome their mutual mistrust, Arlo and Spot, as the dino names the dog-like boy, become friends and ­together set out on a dangerous journey back to the family farm.

The main villains are a group of flying dinosaurs led by a smarmy nyctosaurus named Thunderclap (Steve Zahn). There’s also a ferocious tyrannosaurus family, headed by Butch (a well cast Sam Elliott), but their main interest turns out the be a surprising one. Let’s just say this is no Jurassic Park. Director Peter Sohn, a Pixar animator, writer and voice artist who worked on the marvellous Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010), does double duty as an eccentric styracosaurus.

A bit like Daddy’s Home, The Good Dinosaur doesn’t quite live up to the potential of its starting idea, with the story petering out a bit towards the end, but the animation is first rate and there are some thrilling scenes, such as when Arlo is swept into a raging river. There are also some touching moments, including when Arlo and Spot wordlessly communicate their mutual loss, that remind us how central families are to us all, for better and worse.

Daddy’s Home (PG)

2.5 stars

National release

The Good Dinosaur (PG)

3 stars

National release