The Out-Laws

Directed by Tyler Spindel, The Out-Laws follows mild-mannered banker Owen Browning (Adam DeVine) as he’s unwittingly drawn into a dangerous escapade after his girlfriend’s (Nina Dobrev’s Parker) felonious parents (Pierce Brosnan’s Billy and Ellen Barkin’s Lilly) arrive on the scene. It’s an agreeably over-the-top premise that’s employed to periodically watchable yet mostly underwhelming effect by Spindel, as the filmmaker, armed with a script by Evan Turner and Ben Zazove, delivers a hit-and-miss comedy that too often emphasizes elements of an egregiously (and gratingly) larger-than-life nature – with this especially true of a perpetually (and pervasively) nails-on-a-chalkboard turn by DeVine that remains an ongoing impediment to the viewer’s enjoyment of the proceedings. (The same can be said of certain comedic set-pieces and supporting performances, with, in terms of the latter, Lil Rel Howery and Lauren Lapkus bringing the narrative to a dead stop whenever their broadly-conceived figures are on screen.) And while the picture admittedly does boast a handful of agreeable attributes and digressions, including Brosnan’s fun, scene-stealing performance and a couple of amusing sequences (eg a car chase through a cemetery), The Out-Laws builds towards a tediously frenetic finale that ensures it concludes on about as lackluster and tiresome a note as one could envision – which ultimately cements the picture’s place as a sporadically passable endeavor that could (and should) have been so much better.

** out of ****