Prime Video movie of the day: Blockers is a dumb raunchy comedy with a smart theme
If you want a fun movie from Prime Video to help you get over the Tuesday blues, and don't mind your comedies on the raunchier side, you should absolutely check out Blockers. It walks the line perfectly between being near-brainless OTT comedy on one side, but with an actual message skewering today's helicopter parents underlying it all that's very much not brainless, and with a bunch of great breakout performances from rising talent to top it all off.
The story revolves around three teenage girls who make a pact, American Pie-style, to have sex on Prom night, and their parents, who discover this plan and hit the road in an attempt to stop them. The parents are played by John Cena, Ike Barinholtz and Leslie Mann, while the daughters are played by up-and-comers Kathryn Newton (Freaky, Abigail), Geraldine Viswanathan (Cat Person, Drive Away Dolls), and Gideon Adlon (The Craft: Legacy).
The trick to this movie is that the girls are not getting involved in any zany shenanigans. They're just going to Prom, having fun with boys (or, at least, attempting to), partying, and navigating the general complexities of being a teen; totally normal rite-of-passage stuff. It's the parents who end up doing all kinds of insane stuff in an attempt to stop their kids from having a completely normal experience.
The supposedly responsible grown-ups accidentally invade a couple's blindfolded sex games, crash a kegger, get tricked into having a beer enema, and steal a phone to track their daughters who are now desperately avoiding them.
The movie is fundamentally about how the parents are failing to deal with their kids growing up and being left to make their own decisions, only told through the comedy of early 2000s gross-out movies. They each have a slightly different reason for going on this manic quest, some more worthy than others (Barinholtz's character has the most complex background going on, and the most valid reason to worry, but this is clearly not the best way to handle it); but ultimately, they're the ones struggling with immaturity.
One of the movie's finest moments is how it handles the end result of the teen girls' quests for 'action', not all of which are successful in terms of the pact, but all of which are important in their own way.
It's a really funny, really good-natured, occasionally salacious comedy – perfect for a random movie night if you're hunting for one of the best Prime Video movies.
