Peter Bradshaw 

Why Him? review – Bryan Cranston in disposable festive fun

In this moderately entertaining Christmas comedy, Cranston plays a dad anxious about a tech billionaire’s interest in his daughter
  
  

Craggy disapproval … Bryan Cranston, left, with James Franco.
Craggy disapproval … Bryan Cranston, left, with James Franco. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Bryan Cranston and Megan Mullaly supply some ballast to this silly, broad, moderately entertaining comedy on the Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner theme from director and co-writer John Hamburg (who wrote for the Zoolanders and Fockers). They’re Ned and Barb, a married couple who own an old-fashioned printing company in Michigan, feeling the pinch in an increasingly digital, paperless world. To their horror, they discover that their 21-year-old daughter Stephanie (Zoey Deutch) is dating a smug thirtysomething tech billionaire and wild man called Laird Mayhew (James Franco) who has inappropriate language, tattoos, and enormous wealth based on precisely that online revolution that is putting this middle-aged couple out of business. Laird invites them to his hi-tech modern mansion over the Christmas holidays, intent on asking Ned for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Franco does what he does – though frankly he is getting a little old for some of this stuff. It’s Cranston who keeps the film upright with his craggy, Spencer Tracy-type disapproval. There’s a funny cameo from the veteran glamrockers, Kiss. A disposable bit of Yuletide fun.

 

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