"Only the Brave" is based on the true story of a group of elite firefighters who lose their lives protecting a town from a wildfire. "The 15:17 to Paris" is based on the true story of three Americans who stop a terrorist attack on a train to Paris. "Tag" is based on the true story of five adults who love to play a children's game.
One of these things is definitely not like the others. "Tag" is not only the latest example of how Hollywood is running out of original ideas, but it is proof no one seems to care that the imagination void is getting deeper and wider.
The latest example of the kind of banal and boring material being passed off as entertainment is the story of five friends who have been playing a game of tag in the month of May for 30 years. Jerry (Jeremy Renner) is the king of tag, having never been touched. The four other friends _ Hoagie (Ed Helms), Callahan (Jon Hamm), Sable (Hannibal Buress) and Chilli (Jake Johnson) _ decide this is the year the untouched string ends. They have great hopes of succeeding as they know Jerry will be in a specific place dealing with his wedding.
Even screenwriters Rob McKittrick ("Waiting...") and Mark Steilen ("The Pooch and the Pauper") recognized there wasn't enough material in this true story to fill a movie. Among the "true" elements changed _ along with reducing the real number of players from 10 to five _ is there's a member of the group who in real life never had been tagged. The idea of creating a tag virgin was necessary in a desperate effort to create some sort of tension.
Even by manipulating the true nature of the movie with major elements, the majority of "Tag" is comprised on scenes of the five guys running. Director Jeff Tomsic ("Crazy House") takes the running element and guides the film through scenes of more running until he finally gets to a few more sequences of running. The only disruptions are when the group decides their game is so important they can ignore the law by breaking into homes, torturing bystanders and destroying public property. There are moments when they physically attack each other in such a way real people would be left in comas, but there's no reason the truth should get in the way of telling a true story.
All McKittrick and Steilen had to do was take a step back and create some interesting histories for the characters. None of the taggers in the film are based directly on real members of the game, so this opens the door for some fertile thinking. They could have explained why Hoagie's wife, Anna (Isla Fisher), is such a psychopath, or how Callahan was able to land a job running a massive business when he doesn't seem to know a single thing about the company or what it does.
Without some type of backstory, the players are nothing more than superficial beings dealing with stereotypical situations: the good-looking guy, the friend with heart, the smug winner, the stoner, the deadpan. It's as if there is a computer program from Scripts-R-Us that features these standard characters.
"Tag" plods along, banking on the likability of the cast to be enough distraction that the script could have been written on a message from a fortune cookie. And even the cast feels like the B-team that had to be called in when smarter actors passed on the project.
Helms always comes across like the poor man's Steve Carell, and Johnson's character would have had far more edge with Charlie Day in the role. Buress takes on the character that would have been far more interesting with Kevin Har,t and Renner's tough guy act feels like a pale version of Jason Statham. As for Hamm's role _ OK, Hamm can do little wrong, so his casting works.
The great fear is "Tag" will find an audience and spawn the idea that sequels must be made. If that happens, look for "Duck, Duck, Goose: Fowl Play" or "Red Rover, Red Rover: The Final Conflict" to hit theaters. And both would be based on true stories.
