PLAYDATE

Name: PLAYDATE
Item: PLAYDATE
Author: Review

"A Playdate Goes Wrong, in Many Ways"

Family Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

In PLAYDATE, an action comedy streaming on Prime Video, Brian is feeling adrift. He's struggling to connect with his stepson, Lucas, and has just lost his job. While playing at the park, Brian and Lucas meet Jeff and his son, CJ. Lucas and CJ become fast friends, but Brian is suspicious of Jeff, who’s clearly hiding something. Soon, the fathers and sons are drawn into a dangerous situation and go on the run from the bad guys, who will stop at nothing to get CJ. Can Jeff and Brian unravel the mystery of who CJ really is before the bad guys catch up with them?

PLAYDATE is a fun action comedy with plenty of action and excellent comedic performances from stars Kevin James and Alan Ritchson. However, the movie has a mixed worldview. For example, it stresses strong father-son relationships, friendship, helping others, and prayer. However, people steal cars, beat people up, constantly use foul language and drink in front of children at a playground. In fact, PLAYDATE has more than 115 obscenities and light profanities. So, that’s definitely excessive and unacceptable.

Content:

(BB, Pa, C, PP, LLL, VV, S, A, DD, M):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Moral worldview promotes strong father-son relationships, friendship and helping others, but also features scenes with immoral behavior, such as stealing cars, driving recklessly, using foul language, drinking in front of children, but there is some light Christian elements, with one character praying and another proclaiming “God is so good,” plus some strong patriotic elements where one character is a veteran;

Foul Language:

107 obscenities (including one “f” word and at least 33 “s” words), 10 “OMG” profanities, and two characters show their middle fingers;

Violence:

Many scenes of action violence, including fistfights and shootouts and car chases (but no blood is shown), a character is tased in one scene, and a character blows up a building filled with child clones;

Sex:

No sex scenes but one character says he’s slept with “thousands of women”;

Nudity:

No nudity;

Alcohol Use:

Adults drink alcohol at a playground;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

A character smokes a cigarette and tells another character she can get him drugs; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Light immorality, as characters steal cars and drive recklessly in an effort to get away from the bad guys, one character lies about his relationship with another but comes clean, the same character has a dysfunctional relationship with his father who jokes about “abandoning” him as a child, and a character asks someone if they’re alright with their child saying curse words, and the character ignorantly says it’s fine because “words can’t hurt anyone.”

More Detail:

PLAYDATE is an action comedy on Prime Video. Brian struggles to connect with his stepson, Lucas, and to adjust to his new role as a stay-at-home dad. When they meet Jeff and CJ, an intense father-son duo, things get chaotic, and the dads and sons find themselves drawn into a secret government experiment.

PLAYDATE is full of entertaining car chases and fight scenes, and many funny moments from comic actor Kevin James and action star Alan Ritchson of REACHER. However, the movie’s plot is a bit flimsy, with more time spent on car chases than on explaining key elements of the story. The biggest problems with PLAYDATE, though, are that it has more than 115 obscenities and light profanities, a reference to having been with “thousands of women,” a brief drug reference, and some alcohol use around children.

In the movie, Kevin James plays Brian, who’s been fired from his job and is now a stay-at-home dad. Worse, Brian is struggling in his relationship with his stepson, Lucas.

While playing at the park, Brian and Lucas meet Jeff and CJ, another father-son pair. Brian is uncomfortable with Jeff, a big muscular guy played by Alan Ritchson. However, Lucas quickly accepts CJ’s offer to come to their house and play. Jeff is excited, too, but Brian grows increasingly suspicious of Jeff and CJ’s relationship. After a trip to an arcade ends in fistfights and a car chase, Jeff comes clean. CJ isn’t really his son, but a boy he rescued from a lab.

Now, the fathers and sons are on the run from bad guys who will stop at nothing to get CJ back. Can Jeff and Brian unravel the mystery of who CJ really is before the bad guys catch up with them?

PLAYDATE is a fun action-comedy with excellent comedic performances from stars Kevin James and Alan Ritchson. However, the movie has a mixed worldview and excessive foul language. For example, the movie often stresses strong father-son relationships, friendship and helping others, but its characters often act immorally, such as stealing cars and beating people up. PLAYDATE also features more than 115 obscenities and light profanities, including one “f” word and at least 33 “s” words. This excessive and gratuitous foul language is accompanied by many scenes of comical action violence. There’s also an off-color line of dialogue and some alcohol use around children. So, MOVIEGUIDE® finds PLAYDATE unacceptable viewing. The filmmakers should have eliminated the foul language so that a wider audience could see their movie.