![]() ![]() (It’s shockingly not Hamm, who here maximizes his elastic eyebrows and cartoonish good looks.) Tag is better when it fumbles for the boundaries of the game. (U Can’t Touch This must have been too expensive.) The script cheapens itself squeezing in empty gags about a homophobic – and possibly closeted – receptionist (Thomas Middleditch) and Hoagie’s mom’s (Nora Dunn) inappropriate crush on one of his childhood playmates. He’s built out this world to be about more than nostalgia, though there’s plenty of that, too, from cassette tapes to a needle-drop of the 1995 Pharcyde hit Runnin’ that’s so pitch-perfect he plays it twice. Tomsic is aware of the cruelties of the game: the injuries, the trampled bystanders, the lonely geeks who long to join and the PTSD-like paranoia that’s forced Sable into therapy (which he also seems to be directing at his wife who gets mentioned once and forgotten). Hannibal Buress, Jake Johnson and Ed Helms in Tag Photograph: Kyle Kaplan But for all the great, dumb pleasures of Tag, even the film itself would agree that deciphering why these guys play is even less weighty than Rosebud. Orson Welles might nod that he used the same reporter plot device in Citizen Kane. Screenwriters Rob McKittrick and Mark Steilen don’t even hammer her into the script as a love interest, making Crosby’s presence so extraneous I kept checking the backseats of cars, expecting the film would forget she’s supposed to be there. In an opening scene, Hoagie sabotages Callahan’s big interview with – oh hi! – the Wall Street Journal, who’s managed to be written into the film by recasting original journalist Russell Adams as beautiful blonde Rebecca Crosby (Annabelle Wallis), who impulsively decides to city-hop across America to Jerry’s wedding with these strangers without packing a toothbrush or a personality. How does the game mesh with their adult lives? Poorly. As Hoagie vows: “We get Jerry now or we die. Besides, they’re guaranteed to show anyway. If they attend, they’ll just tackle him at the pulpit. When Jerry plans his wedding – 31 May, according to his hard-headed fiancee’s (Leslie Bibb) dream date – he doesn’t even invite his pals. ![]() Ironically, it also keeps these competitive best friends at a distance. Tag keeps them young, or at least acting like it until their knees give out vaulting a fire escape.
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