Drunk Parents (2019)

Directed by: Fred Wolf | 93 minutes | comedy | Actors: Alec Baldwin, Salma Hayek, Jim Gaffigan, Joe Manganiello, Treat Williams, Michelle Veintimilla, Natalia Cigliuti, Colin Quinn, Eddie Schweighardt, Jeremy Shinder, Ben Platt, Olivia Luccardi

The premise of ‘Drunk Parents’ is still quite original. Parents take their only daughter to college. The farewell is touching, my daughter is reminded that mom and dad are proud of her and that she can always contact her if there is something wrong. And then…? Do mom and dad go home and their good daughter starts playing the beast on campus, all the while pretending she’s studying hard? No… Mom and Dad come home, stressed by the fact that the many creditors now want to see real money – money that isn’t there and won’t be there in the near future and drink one gulp too much of the expensive bottle of wine they pecking from a neighbor’s basement. Trying to sell the furniture during a yard sale, only to get in deeper and deeper trouble…

So ‘Drunk Parents’ is funny on paper and in the beginning, as the story unfolds, the film still has the benefit of the doubt. But really nothing in this production is worth a smile. With a script that shows a little more good taste, it could have turned out to be something. Frank (Alec Baldwin) and Nancy (Salma Hayek) go from one problem to another, largely self-imposed, but what sane person comes up with these kinds of solutions to financial problems? They rent out the absent neighbor’s house to a convicted pedophile in no time and this lucrative deal earns them quite a bit of money, it also causes a mistake of identity where it is thought that Frank and Nancy are the pedophiles. Then there’s something about Rachel’s left-behind boyfriend, who’s in a wheelchair; a brawl with a random passerby at a gas station and a couple of bums (wacky cameo by Will Ferrell), who accidentally set themselves on fire. It all makes no sense.

A comedy without good jokes is up to that point, but what filmmaker Fred Wolf has completely missed is the editing. The scenes often flow into each other without any connection to the previous clip, so you get the impression that a lot of the action just happened outside the view of the cameras. Didn’t anyone pay attention when checking the finished product? Or were the champagne bottles already open to celebrate that what should have been a hell of a job was finally completed? ‘Drunk Parents’ is an hour and a half of your life that you can’t get back.