Mark Reviews Movies: HOUSE PARTY (2023)

House Party, Warner Bros. Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 12, 2023

When the party starts, the fun basically ends in House Party. All we want from something like this is a little fun, and the movie can't even deliver something so simple.

The title and basic idea, of course, should be familiar, since this is the newest incarnation of the film with the same name from 1990, which was written and directed by Reginald Hudlin with a lot of playfulness and good feelings, while it starred Christopher Reid and Christopher Martin at the height of their fame as the music duo Kid 'n Play. The formula is pretty simple: A couple of friends want to throw a party that will help their reputation, their dreams, and their chances of romance.

That formula more or less remains intact in this reboot, but this version, written by Jamal Olori and Stephen Glover, throws significant selling point for both the party and the movie into the mix. This is no ordinary house. It's a mansion belonging to one of the most famous athletes in the world.

In theory, the possibilities for entertainment are much bigger and broader than a bash thrown at the house of some teenager while his parents are away on a trip. Despite setting up the whole premise, Olori and Glover probably could have benefited some reminding of that fact in the process of writing the script.

It's not entirely their fault, of course. The main characters here aren't much help, either. They're played by Tosin Cole and Jacob Latimore, who aren't given much to do once the music, the plotting, and the long line of constant cameos come into play, and the two actors return the favor with a pair of blandly charming performances.

Cole plays Damon (pronounced "like the French way," he insists), who dreams of becoming a promoter but mostly spends his nights spending a lot of money he doesn't really have at various clubs in Los Angeles. His best friend Kevin, played by Latimore, got Damon a job at the same cleaning company for which he works—trying to make as much money as he can to buy a house, provide for his daughter, and prove that he should have sole custody of his kid. The sentiment of all this is nice, and it also doesn't matter once Damon gets a really great or really terrible idea.

From his current girlfriend Venus (Karen Obilom), Kevin learns that he and Damon are about to be fired from the company. Cleaning one last house before the two are unemployed, Damon realizes the sprawling mansion would make the perfect venue for a party that could instantly make him the big-time promoter he wants to be. It helps that the estate belong to basketballer LeBron James, whose long list of celebrity contacts could help make Kevin a lot of money from the entry fees, too.

Hudlin's original film was a little movie with grounded ambitions. This one is a bigger movie with ambitions to show just how much bigger it can be. Calmatic, the director, doesn't seem to care much about characters, story, pacing, or much of anything that could hold this free-flowing—or absent—narrative together.

The main gag is that the movie takes place in James' house, so the resulting mess is an expensive one and the party guests amount to a who's who of musicians, basketball players, and other celebrities. A famous face appears, only to be interrupted by another offering a throwaway joke while passing through the frame. Scott Mescudi, known mainly as Kid Cudi, receives the most significant cameo role apart from James (who shows a self-deprecating sense of humor as a hologram of himself, only for the movie to ruin a potentially decent joke by letting the star show off his skills). The way Mescudi's character and the movie take a turn toward a nefarious underground organization mostly shows how few ideas the filmmakers possess beyond packing the movie with such famous figures. Anyway, most of the cameos and gags are shown up by D.C. Young Fly, who plays the party's DJ with great comic timing and a subtly expansive range of facial expressions.

Throughout, we're just waiting for the movie to come up with or pay off some of its multiple possibilities—watching a spontaneous dance-off, wondering what scheme a wacky trio of rival promoters will attempt, seeing Damon and Kevin argue briefly until they reconcile almost as quickly, trying to figure out the thinking of a running gag involving a roaming koala in the garden. House Party doesn't need to try doing nearly this much, and in valuing cameos and random gags over characters and relatable situations, the movie doesn't end up doing much of anything fun.

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