The Bryan Cranston movie storming the Netflix charts
An entire generation knows Bryan Cranston best as the cold, calculating, and ruthless Walter White, but the generation before that knew him best as the goofy dad from Malcolm in the Middle.
When the actor was first announced to be playing a terminally ill science teacher who turns to drug manufacturing in order to safeguard his family’s financial future in Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad, eyebrows were understandably raised when he was freshest in the mind as a comedy performer.
Of course, his 150+ episodes as the bumbling Hal in the popular TV series were quickly banished from memory when Cranston went about crafting one of the all-time great small screen performances, but the biggest challenge he faced after the end of Breaking Bad was trying to continue his rich vein of form without falling victim to the dangers of typecasting.
In the aftermath, he was no doubt offered plenty of crime thrillers, but the actor instead chose to weave between genres, which was more inconsistent than anything else. One of his most forgettable ventures by far was John Hamburg’s comedy Why Him? which wasted both his dramatic and comedic talents in a thankless role.
Plenty of top-level talent was attached on either side of the camera, though. Hamburg was previously responsible for writing Meet the Parents and Zoolander, while he scripted and helmed the cult favourite I Love You, Man. Jonah Hill developed the story for Why Him?, with the cast featuring James Franco, Zoey Deutch, Megan Mullally, and Keegan-Michael Key, among others.
Playing a straight-laced and overprotective father, Cranston’s Ned travels to California to meet Deutch’s daughter and her new boyfriend, with Franco a self-obsessed and profane manchild who serves as the CEO of a video game company and lives a hedonistically carefree lifestyle.
Yep, it’s one of those predictable comedies where the two are instantly at loggerheads over their opposing views on how to approach life and figure out which future for the woman they both care about equally should look like. The initial tension gives way to a begrudging mutual respect and, ultimately, closeness by the time the credits roll.
Not a single wheel comes close to being reinvented, but that hasn’t prevented Why Him? from becoming one of Netflix’s top-viewed titles this week. Having been added to the library, it’s wound up as the sixth most-watched movie in the United Kingdom, even if it’s 111 minutes that are hardly going to linger long in the memory.