House Party review: reboot brings some of the original’s humor, but not its charm
The latest LeBron James-produced reboot is thankfully no Space Jam... but it's no House Party either
Film Reviews house party
As House Party begins, co-protagonist Kevin (Jacob Latimore) tells us “There’s some crazy, beautiful, weird-ass shit about to go down.” When we meet his co-lead, Tosin Cole’s Damon (pronounced duh-MON), another character declares “It smell like ass and onions in here!” Both offer reviewers irresistibly easy comparisons, but this attempted franchise reboot doesn’t fully resemble either remark. Certainly, it works best when indulging its weird-ass side, but like onions, some scenes really could have used additional preparation to be more palatable.
In the gradually increasing pantheon of LeBron James-produced remakes of movies he liked as a kid, House Party is a definite improvement over Space Jam: A New Legacy, probably because it actually has good source material to work from. The feature directorial debut of Reginald Hudlin, based on his award-winning student film, was originally intended as a vehicle for Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff, but arguably fared better with the lesser known Kid n’ Play, whose chemistry was similar. A bit of a surprise hit in 1992, it spawned a theatrical trilogy and two direct-to-video sequels. For those concerned with continuity, this is not a legacy sequel, with the original movie existing as a movie within it.
A reboot was surely inevitable, though it curiously misses the most important ingredient: two leads who are already friends and have that natural chemistry together. Latimore and Cole aren’t just from very different places—the former best known for his singing, and the latter best known for Doctor Who. But their characters don’t even feel like they should be friends. Latimore’s Kevin is a single dad scrambling to make a life independent of his parents; Cole’s Damon is an irresponsible party promoter who steals and scams. Longtime pals like Kid n’ Play can make that odd-couple dynamic work, while these two, minus that familiarity, just seem like they should leave each other well enough alone.
Also working against the reboot is a significant change in premise. Instead of high schoolers sneaking around behind their parents’ backs to party and have (safe) sex—something most moviegoers of that age and above can relate to—our protagonists are party promoters looking to make a life-saving amount of cash. As a celebrity entrepreneur and all-time great athlete, James can probably relate. The rest of us? Maybe not as much. The part where they’re also about to be fired from their day jobs as house cleaners brings things a bit more down to Earth, with the high concept coming in when they realize they’re at the house of LeBron himself, and can make money by holding a party there that same night, using his email contact list and some quick viral marketing.
To its credit, and this isn’t damning with faint praise, the new House Party is frequently very funny. (The R-rated language and creative insults are a great asset, even if they might restrict the potential teen audience.) What it has in humor, though, it lacks in pace. Co-writers and Atlanta alumni Jamal Olori and Stephen Glover ought to be just right for the job, but the story drags, a lot. At a certain point, the viewer may wonder why the party hasn’t started yet; once it finally does, we join it already in progress. It also lacks any real sense of jeopardy: a villainous trio called Young Threats feels relatively lightweight, and doesn’t even share many scenes with Kevin and Damon. The ghost of Tiny Lister would wipe his shoes with them.
The big exception to the pacing issue is a wonderfully bizarre side plot centered on Kid Cudi who, playing himself (sort of), becomes a sort of Neil Patrick Harris to Kevin and Damon’s Harold and Kumar. His appearance is too good to spoil but it suggests, together with last year’s criminally underseen Entergalactic, that Cudi has cinematic talents we’ve slept on for far too long. Plenty of other celebrity cameos litter the movie—director Calmatic (Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” video) seemingly used LeBron’s email list the same way Kevin and Damon did onscreen—but most are weirdly worshipful, suggesting that all these famous people are superior, better human beings. Only Cudi happily torches all preconceptions, and runs away with the movie for his effort. James mildly mocks his own insecurities, but easily balances that out with the sheer number of characters who call him the greatest.
The new House Party can’t really offer an equivalent to the late, great Robin Harris as the angry dad; Eddie Murphy or Dave Chappelle would probably ask for too much; and Bernie Mac, who’d be perfect, is sadly deceased. Bill Bellamy, who gets the thankless shoes to step into, makes the most of it with a throwaway joke about being a self-made man because of what he stole in the 1992 L.A. riots, but it’s probably for the best that the character is minimized to avoid unfair comparisons.
Latimore and Cole are okay leads, with Cole impressing all the more once you realize he’s not doing his natural accent. They just lack that shorthand quality that lifelong friends should have. The best actors can fake it; the most charming actors have it for real. These two are somewhere in the middle, much like most of the movie. With all its languid stretches between gags, House Party feels like it had a script designed for expert improvisers as the leads, and didn’t get them. When it goes high concept in the third act and finally calls for actual story, it excels, but not, perhaps, for long enough.
(House Party opens in theaters nationwide on January 13)
45 Comments
I don’t know why you needed to throw Tiny Lestors in there when Full Force were pretty damn good bullies in the original.
They’re gonna kick your fucking a-aass!They were in no way believable as high schoolers, but setting that aside were exactly the kind of unsupervised hooligans you always worried would show up uninvited.
They were in no way believable as high schoolersTrue, but didn’t every High School have some guys who looked like they were 30 sleeping in the back of the class, with the requisite whispers of, “how many grades did those dudes get held back?!?” and “You think he’s a narc?”
I always think of one guy in particular at my school who was built like a lumberjack and extremely volatile. He lived next door to one of my best friends and would wander over every now and then, which was always tense as hell and a relief when he left. And yeah, he looked about 25.
I remember we had a “new student” that showed up in, like, February who looked old as hell, sat in the back of the class, and always wore an old army coat. Our nickname for him was Jump Street. Turns out we were right, he ended up busting some idiot for selling him, like, four ounces of weed and some Vicodin from grandma’s medicine cabinet. Great use of police resources, there.
I don’t think any of them were believable as high schoolers (maybe Kid), certainly not Martin Lawrence and Play. Either way, they smell, they smell…you know the rest.
“They were in no way believable as high schoolers”I dunno. I had this one dude in my 9th grade P.E. class looked just like my uncle, mustache and everything. Like a brunette Wooderson.
The OG movie worked because it was two “teens” trying to throw a house party. This is 2 grown ass men, on with a family, who are party promoters throwing a ummm party.
Exactly.
Can we take a vote and not allow LeBron James to be involved with ANY movies moving forward. So far he is 0-2 for unneeded reboots.
But was there a house?
No just a vacant dirt parking lot lol.
well then fuck this.
Yeah, one of the original film’s greatest strengths is its relatability. The story and its characters were so relatable that, while the Black experience was front and center, it resonated with people (at least in the US) regardless of ethnicity or socioeconomic status.And, to steal a line from Jimmy McGinty, it had miles and miles of heart. This looks like another soulless cash grab that has very little in common with the original other than the name and the very broadest strokes of its story (there’s a PARTY in a HOUSE!).
Right I remember seeing it as 12 or 13 year old white kid and even though I couldn’t appreciate the blackness of it, I 100% could relate to bascially everything else about it. Also that dance off with Kid and Play was the SHIT.
plus it was ACTUALLY COOL. not just people interpreting what might be cool.
So it sounds like this “House Party” tried to capture the charm of the original “House Party,” wound up being more of a retread of “Old School,” and not being quite as good as either due to both casting chemistry and plot/target audience resonance.
“Could you tell me why in God’s name you called his mother a garden tool?”
LeBron James is really just starting to get insufferable isn’t he. Yeah he’s good at the bouncing sports ball but does anyone want to see him in movies?I think “The King” should stick to Basketball
You don’t want to see how rich Lebron is and how fancy his mansion is?
and LeBron James as Roger Murdock in Airplane! (The Reimagining)
Why would he remake Airplane when Soul Plane is begging for a reboot?
Listen Grandpa, I been hearin’ that crap since I was at UCLA!
i think that school he founded is pretty cool.
Is that the one where some black teenagers murdered a white kid?
“Yeah he’s good at the bouncing sports ball but does anyone want to see him in movies?”He sure seems to think so, and since Space Jam 2 made money, studios will let him!
Did it? I thought it flopped because of the same day HBO max release.
I don’t know, I’m probably talking out my ass. I kinda figured it must’ve had a relatively decent return, given how much talk there was about it all over the internet (or at least the corners I frequent).But then I hadn’t figured in the Max release so that probably did eat a chunk of sales.
Looking at internet numbers. Which may not be very accurate. Its world wide box office was 163 million. Its budget was 150 million. That doesn’t account for marketing(which costs money) and licensing(which makes money). Nor does it account for possible HBO max subscribes gained to watch the movie. So did it make money, maybe. It didn’t blow up the box office but not much did in 2021. Did it have a bit of a viral moment, even if it was mostly “Did you see how bad that was?”, definitely
Hey, you try dragging Kevin Love up and down the court for 48 minutes and see how good a movie you come up with.
The original was 1990, not 1992!
Andrew Santino is in it…I’m sold.
but not its charm…nor it’s iconic hairstyle, apparently.
SYNOPSIS: A remake of the 1990 comedy, ‘ House Party’.Reviewer: “A bit of a surprise hit in 1992″
So this leads me to believe it came out in 1991. Am I right?But also: “The R-rated language and creative insults are a great asset, even if they might restrict the potential teen audience.”
What the fuck does this mean? How will the audience be restricted? Like prevented from seeing the movie? When was the last time an AMC carded a person who actually paid money to walk in to a theater? This reads like it was written sometime in 1990-1992.And then, when you thought all hope was lost:
(House Party opens in theaters nationwide on January 13)Finally! Thank you.
oh c’mon pointing out that it’s r rated and saying that it might effect 13 year olds being able to see it theatrically is perfectly reasonable to put in a review of a movie.
Except this is a remake of a film from the 90s that, unlike it’s 90s namesake, doesn’t feature characters in high school. It’s a movie about adults based on source material kids under 18 likely aren’t familiar with. So, based on the fact that it’s an R-Rated film about non-teens, could we also say that the same applies to the Scream remakes? The new Halloween films? Any R-Rated film? But yeah, no theater is stopping a youngster from buying a ticket to anything, since you can buy tickets online using gift cards (which can be purchased with cash) if they REALLY need to get around an MPAA no one pays attention to anymore.
So this isn’t a reboot so much as a literal interpretation of the title.
It’s pretty much House Party 4. That film also didn’t have anything to do with the original, either in spirit or execution, but was instead a shameless attempt to leverage nostalgia without even trying to honor the creation people were nostalgic for.
This is vomitous. Mr. James, who obviously has too much money, needs someone to tell him how to spend that money intelligently. At least more intelligently than this. Rebooting a mediocre movie then making it worse is a poor financial strategy. ‘ Course, this is probably pocket change for him; nevertheless, don’t jam up theaters with a stupid movie. OMG! Wait! Hollywood has already been doing that—for like the last 10+ years! WTF! I hope California falls off into the Pacific.
I feel like they should only market this to people who remember the original because anyone younger than that who finds out it’s a remake will find an image of the original poster or VHS box and have so many questions about 90’s hairstyles that they’ll forget all about this movie.
they’ll forget all about this movie.I think that’s going to happen regardless.
The OG (which was 1990 not 92 per the article) worked primarily because of Kid and Play and their chemistry. And also the timely culture they were there representing. It was a time and place. And it was awesome. But now is now. And the two dont match
I’m hoping Lebron was a massive fan of Titanic because his remake is going to be hilarious. He’s basically the Be Kind Rewind of the movie producing worldhttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0799934/
This review is wayyyyy overwritten.