TAG Review – Spoiler Free
TAG is a comedy film which comes directed by Jeff Tomsic and stars Ed Helms, Hannibal Buress, Jon Hamm, Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson, Isla Fisher and Jeremy Renner. TAG is a film about a group of long time high school friends who organise a yearly game of tag to play together, which has gone on for years after they’ve finished school and the stakes are becoming increasingly high.
Going into to see this film this week, I wasn’t too sure what to expect. I do enjoy going in to see comedy films every now and then at the cinema and TAG looked like it had a good cast of actors I do enjoy watching such as Jon Hamm, Ed Helms and Jeremy Renner. But as a concept and an idea, playing tag to me just seemed a little silly and really what is this?
It turns out though that the film is based loosely off the true story of a bunch of men in America who actually did play tag and still apparently do in their adult years. I’m a little surprised this is still going on, but it’s nice I guess that a group of friends are still playing together even in their adult years.
TAG is a story mainly filled with themes of friendship and the importance of maintaining it even beyond your school years. There’s some observations made in the film about how hard this is to maintain as most high school groups become distant when everyone goes to separate workplaces. Playing the game of tag together for this group is a way to stay together and keep in touch every year. There’s also some themes in this film about getting old and everything that comes with that. I find it a little interesting that it had such similar themes to what we get in The Leisure Seeker, which was also released this week in Australia.
As a comedy experience, I did think some parts were pretty funny. The idea of Jeremy Renner’s character Jerry, being this tag player god where no one can possibly get him and he has never been tagged ever is a little insane. The slow motion sequences throughout the film where the other characters are trying to tag Jerry are probably all the high points. For something that really is just really silly, it does work in the film and I have to say I enjoyed watching TAG and all the shenanigans they got up to. There’s still probably a lot more that they could have done with the plot, but as as something in the comedy genre, I think it has enough depth and should bring a few laughs during its run time.
The actors all try to do their best with what they have. There’s not much variation in the performances. But I felt the standout actors were Jeremy Renner, Ed Helms and Jon Hamm. The rest were all pretty good to, but there’s possibly too many friends in the game they’re playing to pay attention to. There were some characters like Jake Johnson’s Randy or Hannibal Buress’ Kevin which fall a little flat and don’t make that great an impact. It would have been better to cut those two and build on Ed Helms’ character a little more or let us learn more about Jeremy Renner’s character as it was quite important for making this film a greater. There’s just way to many characters.
Overall this is an interesting comedy to go and see this weekend. You have a similar choice this week, with The Leisure Seeker being a film with similar themes of old age. Although TAG is one I would recommend over The Leisure Seeker if you’re looking for something that’s not going to make you sad. This one will make you laugh much more (I hope). The actors are all quite funny and you’ll get something out of the slow motion Jeremy Renner tag sequences. Coming out of seeing the film, it was a lot better than I thought it would be by looking at the trailers online.
