I watched cheesy comedy Blockers (2018) but I’ll admit that it brings up an important topic: women have their own agency

Blockers is a raunchy 2018 comedy that I didn’t find terribly funny or realistic. Despite all that, I thought the film brought up an important topic.

Blockers (2018)

The film stars Leslie Mann, John Cena, Ike Barinholtz as three parents, and each has a daughter in the senior year of high school. Those three actresses are played by Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan, and Gideon Adlon. All three young women have entered a pact with each other to lose their virginity later that night after senior prom. The parents accidentally catch wind of the sex pact, and spend the entire evening running around town, trying to find their daughters all, and stop them before they lose their virginity. Their reasoning is that they don’t want their daughters to make a “huge mistake.”

(Fun fact – Gideon Adlon is Pamela Adlon’s real life daughter. Talented family.)

Lots of hijinks ensue. I wouldn’t say it was hilarity that ensued, because I thought it was a cheesy unrealistic comedy. It wasn’t smart funny, and the unrealistic gags didn’t work for me.

* minor spoilers of a dumb gag ahead *

There’s a scene / gag where the three parents have tracked down their daughters to a vacation cabin or house. To get inside, the straight-laced John Cena character agrees to stick a tube up into his rectum and chug beer through his rear end. Yes, I have heard of this. But it’s so ridiculous for his character to agree to this that I found it dumb.

* end of minor spoilers about the aforementioned dumb gag *

I normally enjoy a good raunchy comedy as long as there is some thought put into writing it, or the comedy is believable. The last raunchy comedy I watched was 2017’s Girl’s Trip. Was it completely realistic? No, but it was smartly written for the most part, and the four actresses made the film characters interesting.

I clearly didn’t enjoy this comedy, so why did I mention there was an important topic? I thought the film brings up that women young and old have their own thoughts and desires, even though I personally thought it was handled in a ham-handed manner. How many comedies has Hollywood put out about teenage guys desperately trying to lose their virginity? How many films or TV shows have featured this idea that we as a society need to stop women from having sex? The young women in this film are about 18 years old, going off to college in the fall, and should be allowed to make their own decisions about their careers, life decisions, and love life. Women are also sexual, and to ignore that they have their desires is…. hypocritical and frankly wrong.

Which goes back to adult women of any age really — they have their own hopes, dreams, desires, etc, and there are all of these people out there who tell them they’re “wrong.” They should want to have sex. They shouldn’t. They should date that person. They shouldn’t. They should want to live life this way. They shouldn’t. It has to be exhausting to be treated this unfairly.

I won’t even go into the fears of violence against women by men, as that’s a whole other topic.

In summary, I didn’t find the movie all that great of  a comedy, but I appreciated what they were trying to do.