Tag has a premise so completely ridiculous—five friends (played by Ed Helms, Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm, Jake Johnson, and Hannibal Buress) that have continued a game of tag for over thirty years—it’s bound to provide entertainment. And so Tag does, though not to the extent I was hoping for. I absolutely hate when I must type such statement in a review; “____ is good, but not as good as it could have been”. I want a film to be fully realized and I want to praise it for such accomplishment—but sadly, films often fall short of what they could have been. Here, Tag suffers from two aspects: energy and focus.
At its high points, Tag is akin to a live-action Looney Tunes cartoon—full of lively slapstick comedy that borders on ridiculous, though, with a premise like Tag, ridiculous is both expected and desired. I enjoy the Sherlock Homes-style thought processes the friends go through as they try to outmaneuver one another. I enjoy the extreme lengths the friends go to tagging and/or avoiding one another. I enjoy how these scenes are set up like intense Catch Me If You Can chase sequences, yet once caught the friends act casually cheerful and welcoming to one another. And I especially love everything about the protagonist’s wife (Isla Fisher), whether it be her loving team-relationship with her husband or her borderline insane devotion to the game.
The film’s energy is a cannon, however, and after firing the blast it takes time to reload and get back to that fiery explosiveness (and I just realized this metaphor is getting quite sexual). During these downtime periods is where Tag rolls into generic storytelling tropes. The film’s love triangle subplot is an unnecessary timewaster. It adds nothing constructive to the characters while adding a bland extra (played by Rashida Jones) who takes screen time away from who should have been more prominent characters—such as the Wall Street journalist (Annabelle Wallis) who devolves into a minor background character by the finale.
Tag makes the mistake of emphasizing the fiancée character’s (Leslie Bibb) detestable traits before jarringly trying to make her appear sweet at the end. It doesn’t work, and I end up hating her more thanks to the film’s frustrating change of heart. The ending also comes across as cheesy while hastily wrapping everything up way too neatly. Tag has its notable issues, and it doesn’t reach the plateau it could have been, but there’s still enough entertaining scenes and likable characters to make the film a fun popcorn comedy worth watching.