Broad comedy may be the trickiest popcorn genre to nail. You could count on two hands good-to-great examples from the last ten years: Girls Trip, Spy, Trainwreck, Bridesmaids, Superbad and the Neighbors and Jump Street franchises. This kind of movie is, at best, joyous and delivers regular laughs. It’s also often of the dick-and-fart variety, with character development and emotional stakes sacrificed on the altar of an outrageous gag.
Scan the DNA of Blockers, the latest and greatest R-rated comedy, and you’ll find genetic material from Meatballs and Porky’s spliced with traits from Clueless and Mean Girls. Imagine the libidinous urge of the former films mixed with the overt girl-centricity of the latter duo. The result is a hormonal brew that’s uniquely and potently feminine and sex-positive. Add a healthy dollop of parental panic, and out comes the finest teen-sex romp since American Pie.
Directed by Kay Cannon, who penned the Pitch Perfect movies, and written by Brian and Jim Kehoe, Blockers unfolds on a group of teens’ prom night and the hours leading up to it. Our three protagonists—Julie (Kathryn Newton), Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan) and Sam (Gideon Adlon) —are on the cusp of adulthood. Early in the picture, they commit to losing their virginity by night’s end, a “sex pact” their helicopter parents inadvertently discover thanks to the unholy alliance of our many electronic devices. And so a chase begins, with an older trio—Julie’s mother Lisa (Leslie Mann), Kayla’s father Mitchell (John Cena) and Sam’s estranged dad Hunter (Ike Barinholtz)—hot on their tails to prevent the agreement from being realized. Hence the title, with the silhouette of a rooster featured prominently on the movie’s poster. Get it? No? Ask a millennial.
That title is notable apart from an obvious, dirty joke. It places the movie on the parents’ shoulders—they’re the titular cock-blockers—whose relative anxieties are elevated above those of their kin. Sex can be a fraught act well into adulthood, but nothing matches the significance of The First Time. And yet, Blockers flips perspective, largely moving away from the young women who’ve decided to check that box, and onto the grownups who, in varying degrees, dread the implication of their kids’ life choices.
Blockers doesn’t give short shrift to our heroines’ coming-of-age experiences. Julie’s need for independence and infatuation with heartthrob boyfriend Austin (Graham Phillips) are in conflict. Kayla talks a big game, but her stoner sex interest Connor (Miles Robbins) is beneath her. As she makes hilariously clear, he’s just a means to an end. Then there’s Sam, whose date (and de-facto mate) Chad (Jimmy Bellinger), confirms boys may not be her thing.
And yet, it’s the parents who steal the show. Mann’s Lisa is haunted both by her bad decisions and an oncoming empty nest. Cena plays Mitchell, a hulk of a man way more naïve than his worldly daughter, with a straight face. And Hunter, Barinholtz’s deadbeat dad, discovers that his lame cool-dude act is predicated on regret.
All of this is a smart way to frame, and give heft to, scene after scene of essentially dumb laughs. The cascading gross-out humor wouldn’t land so well without Blockers’ sharp characterizations and excellent performances. Mann has now proved herself the queen of tightly-wound worrywarts. Cena’s do-gooder persona has been refined to its wonderful essence. But the breakout performance here is from Viswanathan, whose Kayla is so whip-smart, so genuinely progressive and prickly, she makes April Ludgate of “Parks and Recreation” seem shrinking and polite. Late in the movie she asks, “Why does sex have to be bad, anyway?” It’s a question Blockers struggles with throughout its runtime.
Barinholtz, the poor man’s Mark Wahlberg, is the only weak link. Though he regularly grates, this is a generous film. Ike, too, gets his moment of redemption. Blockers delivers on multiple levels, the simplest being belly laughs, the lowest hurdle it vaults high above.
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