Written by Robert Scucci | Published
Happy Madison Productions. A man appears Work Slaves. James Bond. What do these things have in common? in 2023 The Out-Lawsstarring Adam DeVine, Pierce Brosnan, Ellen Barkin, and Nina Dobrev. As much as I wanted to like this movie, the whole is not equal to the sum of its parts. It's one of those moments where you have reliably funny people trying to deliver a screenplay that's too small, and decades too late. The best way to explain The Out-Laws it is a cross in the middle Meet the Parents and any heist movie you've seen since the beginning.
There is good chemistry between the characters, but chemistry alone cannot save a movie that has nothing else to do. The interplay between DeVine and Brosnan is fantastic, and I'd love to see these actors interact more on a meaningful level. Given its critical score of 21 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and the fact that Netflix doesn't publicly report how much revenue its products make, it's safe to say we won't be getting a sequel based on those numbers alone. That would be stupid.
A Charismatic Cast With a Boilerplate Heist
The Out-Lawslike Meet the Parentstells the story of Owen Browning (Adam DeVine), a bank manager who is about to marry his yoga instructor fiancee, Parker (Nina Dobrev). During this time, Owen and Parker have made peace with the fact that his parents, Neil (Richard Kind) and Margie (Julie Hagerty), are naive and outspoken boomer caricatures. A running gag is that they think Parker is a pole dancer because he teaches yoga. Real funny stuff there. Let's make sure they run it into the ground for 95 minutes (spoiler alert).
The conflict begins when Parker's parents, Billy (Pierce Brosnan) and Lily (Ellen Barkin) McDermott, leave work to attend a wedding. As far as Parker knows, his parents have been traveling around the world doing humanitarian work. The truth is that they are two bank robbers known as Ghost Bandits. Once they learn that Owen is the bank manager, they realize that they can pull off a complete crime, mostly because Owen is an idiot.
They commit a robbery, which leads to a conflict involving an Eastern European crime boss, Rehan Zakaryan (Poorna Jagannathan), a dangerous woman to whom they owe a lot of money. Owen has no concrete proof that it was Parker's parents who robbed his bank, as they wore masks, but he does detect the smell of Billy's cologne, which is described as a combination of sandalwood and danger. Between chaos at work, the crime of the McDermotts, and his fiancée, Owen must figure out how to keep the peace as his personal and professional life diverge before the wedding.
The Nuggets Are Solid, But Otherwise Insubstantial
There are some great zingers inside The Out-Laws which are worth sticking to. My favorite is when Billy asks Lily who her favorite James Bond is, and without hesitation she says “Number 5.” Adam DeVine and Pierce Brosnan's collaboration works by design because of the antagonistic dynamic, but DeVine's schtick gets old quickly. He does a lot of screaming and panicking, and tries to throw humor into every single interaction when it's just not that kind of movie. Situational comedy around heists should be more uplifting, not always screaming.
Speaking of heist, that's another big problem with it The Out-Laws. A stupidly simple setup. I can't pinpoint the specific movie it's copying, but it basically says “we robbed a bank, now we need to rob another.” There is no real grand plan. Just find the vault and hack it. There's also a sequence where Owen, dressed as Shrek, has his ass handed to him, and he feels completely forced. As someone on the board said, “I'm not lighting this without a Shrek protest,” and refused to budge.
It all plays out like other comedies that fail because they try too hard to be funny. Another effort by DeVine is his Workaholics alums, Game Over, Manit goes into the same story. You are very dirty (2016) falls into that trap as well. If everyone tries to be funny every time they open their mouth, it gets old quickly, and this movie is no exception.
That's a shame The Out-Laws it wasn't a better movie because the dynamic between DeVine and Brosnan was worth my time. But it's not real either. It is basically Meet the Parents when Gaylord Focker and Jack Byrnes decide to rob a bank. That's the flexibility you get here.
The Out-Laws is a Netflix Original and available to stream with an active subscription.
