Pierce Brosnan and Adam DeVine star in the comedy film The Out-Laws. Streaming now on Netflix.
Pierce Brosnan and Adam DeVine star in the comedy film The Out-Laws. Streaming now on Netflix.
Opinion by Karl Puschmann
Karl Puschmann is Culture and entertainment writer for the New Zealand Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.
You may be able to pick your life partner but you get no say in picking the parents that they bring along with them. It’s essentially a package deal. And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
The idea of one half of a partnership dealing with the exasperating parents of the other has been around so long it can be considered a comedy standard. It’s fueled everything from TV sitcoms like Everybody Loves Raymond, movies like Crazy Rich Asians and thousands upon thousands of zings and one-liners about mothers-in-law.
Ellen Barkin and Pierce Brosnan as Lilly and Billy McDermott in The Out-Laws. Photo / Netflix
Netflix’s new crime comedy The Out-Laws is the latest addition to this comedy subgenre. In many ways, it can be considered the anti-Meet The Parents. In that comedy classic from the year 2000, Ben Stiller’s increasingly agitated character Greg Focker is trying to get onside with his fiancee’s dad, a cranky and distrustful ex-CIA operative played with stoic menace by Robert De Niro. In The Out-Laws, Adam DeVine’s relentlessly cheerful dork Owen Browning is trying to win over his fiancee’s dad, a surly and ill-tempered bank robber played with grimacing annoyance by former 007 Pierce Brosnan.
Of course, at the start of the film, Owen doesn’t know his soon-to-be in-laws are actually the wanted outlaws known as The Ghost Bandits due to their supernatural ability to get away with robbing banks. As he’s a bank manager he may not have been quite so enthusiastic to welcome them into his life had he known the truth. Although, to be fair his fiancee Parker didn’t know the truth about her parents either, believing the lie that they’d spent years deep in the jungle living with an isolated South American tribe.
Adam DeVine as Owen Browning in The Out-Laws. Photo / Netflix
But that belief is punctured when the Ghost Bandits hit Owen’s bank a few days after the in-laws arrive in town. During the stick-up they display a bunch of idiosyncracies he instantly recognises despite the robbers’ masks. Soon enough the truth comes out but by that time Parker’s been kidnapped by a local crime lord who has major beef with the Ghost Bandits after they ripped her off to the tune of $1 million. Claiming interest for the years they’ve been on the lam, she demands a ransom of $5 million for Parker’s safe return. This necessitates the hapless Owen and his professional-criminal in-laws to team up and rob a bank to get the money.
It’s a decent enough premise for a straight-to-Netflix movie. It’s never gonna win an Oscar but should get a few chuckles out of less conservative viewers. The movie is frequently silly, occasionally crass and lands just enough of the juvenile gags it throws at you to keep you watching. Even if there are no memorably quotable lines like De Niro’s brilliantly deadpan, “I have nipples, Greg, can you milk me?” from Meet the Parents. Although Julie Hagerty’s timid, hyper-nervous mum coming out of her shell by revealing, “I participated in an orgy,” over an expensive restaurant lunch, gets close.
Julie Hagerty and Richard Kind as Margie and Neil Browning in The Out-Laws. Photo / Netflix
But the highlight of the film is the trio’s bungling bank robbery. This sees Owen enter the target bank dressed as the cartoon orge Shrek and attempting crowd control while his pro-accomplices take care of getting the money. It’s completely ridiculous, and a stupidly brilliant juxtaposition, and when things naturally go haywire The Out-Laws borders on being laugh-out-loud funny.
As the gormless Owen, DeVine imbues all of his patented manic joviality into the role. As the bank-robbing in-laws, Brosnan and Ellen Barkin ham it up with over-the-top badd-ass posturing and make for a great comedic duo. And Curb Your Enthusiasm’s Richard Kind, who plays Owen’s dad, never misses with his brand of petty, aggravating comedy.
Despite its star cast, The Outlaws never feels bigger than a made-for-TV movie. If you paid to see it on the big screen you’d certainly feel robbed, but it gets away with being a decent enough, watch-and-forget viewing on a rainy winter night.
