Playdate (2025) Parents Guide

Playdate is Rated PG-13 by Motion Picture Rating (MPA) for strong language, violence/action, sexual material, some drug references, and smoking.

Luke Greenfield’s Playdate isn’t just a bad movie it’s the kind of bad that assumes you’ll meet it halfway in stupidity. From its first moments, it feels trapped in amber, as though someone unearthed a forgotten Bruce Willis comedy pitch from 1996, brushed off the cobwebs, and decided to release it straight to Amazon Prime. It’s not merely unfunny it’s the sort of film that’s aggressively determined to prove no one asked for it. Normally, I’m wary of the “who is this for?” brand of criticism it often feels too easy but here, that question hovers over every frame like a blinking red light. Playdate refuses to commit to an audience or even a tone.

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On one side, it’s a slapstick romp about a couple of misfit kids who get to play action heroes for a day a setup that might suggest a movie for younger viewers scrolling through their parents’ Prime accounts. Yet the next moment, it’s tossing in profanity, bursts of violence, and a scene so bizarrely cruel a child tasing his mother before she’s flattened by a truck—that it leaves you wondering if the filmmakers actually hate their own characters. It’s emblematic of how thoughtless the entire project feels. You can sense two likable leads straining to find some spark, only to be sabotaged at every turn by a film determined to make their efforts meaningless.

Imagine Paul Blart crashing headlong into Jack Reacher and you’ll have some idea of the chaos. Kevin James stars as Brian Jennings, a stay-at-home dad who swaps roles with his wife Emily (Sarah Chalke) after losing his job. From there, Neil Goldman’s script plays the oldest, dustiest card in the comedy deck the notion that men are helpless, bumbling idiots the moment you hand them a lunchbox. The joke, if you can call it that, is that Brian is bewildered by the concept of feeding his stepson Lucas (Benjamin Pacak). The kitchen might as well be an alien landscape. Food? Utensils? Civilization itself? All foreign territory.

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Brian’s real problem, though, isn’t the grocery list it’s connection. Lucas doesn’t share his stepdad’s affection for “sports ball” (yes, the script uses that tired bit), preferring to film dance routines instead of running drills. And, because this movie exists in a cultural time warp, that makes Lucas the target of bullies. Of course it does. Playdate clings to the fossilized idea that sensitivity in boys is something to be corrected, or worse, mocked a theme that feels not only stale but slightly mean-spirited.

Enter Jeff Eamon, played by Alan Ritchson, the walking embodiment of suburban testosterone. To be fair, his introduction is one of the only times the movie flirts with actual humor: Jeff hurls a football at his son CJ (Banks Pierce) with the kind of force that might cause a sonic boom. Together, they’re the alpha duo to Brian and Lucas’s betas, a mirror image that the film thinks is far cleverer than it is. Even CJ, a pint-sized parody of his father, seems to possess supernatural strength a joke that eventually becomes a plot twist so mind-numbingly idiotic that you couldn’t possibly see it coming. You wouldn’t believe it even if I told you.

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The deeper the movie goes, the uglier it becomes not visually, though that too but in spirit. Playdate is steeped in a kind of sneering cynicism, a refusal to find warmth or truth in its own absurd premise. The humor curdles into something almost hostile. Even James, usually a reliable vessel for working-class charm, looks defeated. You can see the weariness in his eyes as the script whiplashes between a Jurassic Park reference and a Thelma & Louise wink within minutes, as if random ‘90s citations might count as comedy. The result feels like a studio time capsule opened two decades too late.

It’s frustrating because James can be funny his everyman timing has an unforced sweetness when the material allows it but here he’s stranded. Ritchson, oddly enough, fares better. There’s a self-awareness to his performance, a winking exaggeration of his Reacher persona that edges toward parody. He flirts with the absurd without quite crossing into Scary Movie territory, and in those moments, you glimpse what Playdate might have been if it had any real perspective on the machismo it’s mocking. Ritchson proves he has more comedic range than we’ve seen, and for brief flashes, he almost rescues the movie through sheer commitment to its ridiculousness.

But “almost” is as close as this one gets. Playdate is the kind of project that makes you wonder how it survived the development process a film so devoid of insight, energy, or purpose that even the performers seem to be watching the clock. Ritchson is the only reason to stay seated for this misbegotten playdate, though honestly, you’d have a much better time catching up with Reacher again instead.

Detailed Content Breakdown for Parents

Violence & Intensity: There are several action-sequences: chases, some gunfire, physical fights, and a moment where a woman is tased by a child and then hit by a truck (so the tone tilts unexpectedly dark). The violence is stylised rather than ultra-graphic, but it’s not trivial.

Language: Frequent use of coarse language and adult humour. There are jokes that lean on outdated gender/masculinity tropes.

Sexual Content / Nudity: Mild. Some suggestive jokes and innuendo. No explicit nudity reported.

Drugs, Alcohol & Smoking: Some references to smoking and minor drug/alcohol mention; not the central focus, but present.

Parental Concerns

The tonal inconsistency: a movie that starts light but turns unexpectedly intense. That could surprise younger viewers.

Outdated jokes about gender/masculinity and bullying of a child for non-“tough” interests may strike some as problematic.

The violence, though stylised, may feel harsher than what some expect from a “family film.”

Frequent language and crude humour may be off-putting for younger or more sensitive viewers.

Release date: November 12, 2025 (United States)