Review: Too much and not enough doom ‘The Out-Laws’ and ‘The Crusades’

‘The Out-Laws’

The key to any “facing the imposing future in-laws” comedy — with “Meet the Parents” being the best example — is to cast the kind of actors who can make even the coolest dude look like a dork. Give the producers of “The Out-Laws” credit for getting the incredible Pierce Brosnan and Ellen Barkin to play Billy and Lilly McDermott, a pair of thrill-seekers, who in addition to being the parents of Parker (Nina Dobrev) — the fiancée of nebbishy bank manager Owen (Adam Devine) — also may be the notorious, internationally renowned “Ghost Bandits.” The McDermotts petrify Owen, whose anxieties intensify when the Ghost Bandits rob his bank and draw the attention of ruthless crime boss Rehan (Poorna Jagannathan).

“The Out-Laws” is partly a culture-clash farce, tracking the mounting tension between the suave McDermotts and the fussy, easily flustered Owen. But director Tyler Spindel and screenwriters Evan Turner and Ben Zazove have also made this a high-tech caper movie, as Owen and the McDermotts join forces and infiltrate multiple maximum-security facilities in order to save Parker after she is abducted by Rehan.

Frankly, it’s all a bit too much. Every joke and action scene is cranked up further than necessary. Risqué dialogue turns raunchy; simple heists go to a “Mission: Impossible” level. The safes the Ghost Bandits break into are science-fiction super-safes. When Owen’s mom (Julie Hagerty) and dad (Richard Kind) embarrass him in front of the McDermotts by talking about sex, the conversation drifts into X-rated descriptions of orgies with NFL players. This is the kind of movie where it’s not enough for a clumsy Owen to fall to the ground comically; he also has to have a worm drop onto his face and crawl up his nose. Everything’s extra.

Lost in all this are Brosnan and Barkin, who appear game for anything and are very funny when they get the chance to be — which isn’t often enough, because the filmmakers have too many other gags and bits of shtick to cram in. No situation or character really gets a chance to breathe or grow here. Even the best casts can flail when the vibe is more antic than comic.

‘The Out-Laws.’ TV-MA for language throughout, violence, sexual material and brief drug use. 1 hour, 35 minutes. Available on Netflix; also playing theatrically, Bay Theater, Pacific Palisades

‘The Crusades’

“The Crusades” writer-director Leo Milano and his co-writers, Shaun Early and Jack Hussar, reportedly spent nearly a decade working on this project, which they have said is their attempt to capture the Darwinian savagery of their all-boys private high school experiences. The years of workshopping and tinkering has left them with a film that feels like excerpts from a much longer piece. The weird, unfinished energy makes “The Crusades” more unpredictable than the high school movies it’s paying homage to, but it can also be alienating.

Rudy Pankow (best known for the Netflix teen melodrama “Outer Banks”) stars as Leo, a student at Our Lady of the Crusades, a financially struggling Chicago-area Catholic school where the boys are hyper-competitive — not so much academically or athletically but in terms of fighting with each other, insulting each other and jostling for attention from the ladies. They turn even more feral when they hear that a rival Catholic boys school may be merging with theirs. This inspires Leo and his buddies to have one last wild weekend of partying while they’re still the campus alpha dogs.

The “one crazy weekend” plot is a staple of high school comedies, but Milano and company keep the cartoonish hijinks to a relative minimum. Instead, they lean hard into the clichés of teen movies — a seductive teacher, cranky authority figures, peer pressure, kids frantically covering up criminal misbehavior — while trying to ground them in real emotions. Unfortunately their characters are just too generic, reading only as “teen boy” or “teen girl,” without much to distinguish them. It’s as though we’re supposed to already know these people — as if “The Crusades” were a sequel to a movie we haven’t seen. There is some visual panache here, and scenes that show promise. But too much is missing.

‘The Crusades.’ Not rated. 1 hour, 42 minutes. Available on VOD; also playing theatrically, Laemmle Glendale

‘Anthem’

Peter Nicks’ documentary “Anthem” is a broad-strokes film about a nuanced topic: the promises and failures of the American experiment. “Anthem” does, however, have a useful thought exercise as its central hook: What if we were to rewrite our national anthem? What should it say? And what style of music should it be? Musicians DJ Dahi and Kris Bowers traveled the country, doing some research and talking with the citizenry, looking for input on how to craft a song that represents all of America — including those who feel excluded from “the American Dream.”

Ultimately, the subject is too big for the filmmakers to do it justice. This is the rare doc that maybe should have been a TV series instead of a feature film to give more weight to each issue. That said, even when the history lessons and conversations in “Anthem” are too curtailed and superficial, they do at least spark the viewer’s imagination. The questions here are worth asking. The people watching at home might have more thoughtful answers.

‘Anthem.’ PG, for language and thematic material. 1 hour, 37 minutes. Available on Hulu

Also on VOD

“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” completes (for now) what has been been the best Marvel Cinematic Universe series, running just ahead of the “Captain America” movies. Written and directed once again by James Gunn, the new film brings in some of Marvel Comics’ most “cosmic” characters — including Adam Warlock (Will Poulter) and the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) — for a surprisingly emotional story that connects to several of the Guardians’ traumatic pasts. Available on VOD