Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating *

Cast: Leslie Mann, John Cena, Romana Young, Kathryn Newton, Ike Barinholtz, Gina Gershon, June Diane Raphael, Gary Cole, Miles Robbins, Geraldine Viswanathan, Graham Phillips, Gideon Adlon, Hannibal Burgess, Colton Dunn, Sarayu Blue, Jake Picking, Jimmy Bellinger.

Think of all the times you have been somewhere and you have felt the excruciating wrench in your stomach which says, you made a wrong choice bud, you messed up pretty good, and the final demand of, well perhaps it cannot get any worse. There have been many moments of those in cinema, there will be a plethora, a veritable feast of cringe more in the big screen’s future but few arguably will surely be seen in the light of day, be buffeted the cold wind of slapped foreheads, than the intensely unlikeable Blockers.

It is always with a worry that you might have become too embroiled in looking for the redemptive feature in any aspect of life, the understanding that nothing is truly bad, truly appalling, and yet somehow you always come across something that reminds you that in this big old world where everything is connected and has the right to be, somehow some things just shouldn’t.

It is hard enough to see a magnificent reminder of why cinema captures your heart from a young age, the shared experience of viewing something that takes your breath away; yet in blockers, not only does the script and plot feel as if it has gone ten rounds with a sullen and petulant toddler, it has all the appeal in its acting of a badly rehearsed wedding day in which the bride secretly doesn’t want to be there and the best man and fathers conspire to make their speeches as gut wrenching and inappropriate as possible.

The film also suffers from arguably the belief that it is opening a window onto a new world of humour,that is a bench mark in taste that was left behind when the late, great John Belushi passed away. It is modern yes, it fills and ticks the supposed boxes in which it is required to do, it even jumped through several hoops, the trouble is that it was the wrong way and with a car wreck attitude which is represented on screen and is perhaps the one moment in which the art of comedy is truly captured.

There are moments in which people will tell you they don’t go out to see films anymore, that they don’t get the appeal, in Blockers it is hard, almost impossible to argue with the sentiment. It doesn’t get much worse than awful, but it is to be sure that someone, somewhere, will attempt it.

Ian D. Hall