Tag, a game played by children in playgrounds and backyards around the world, is at the core of director Jeff Tomsic’s TAG.
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In TAG, a group of childhood friends, Hoagie (Ed Helms), Callahan (Jon Hamm), Chilli (Jake Johnson), Kevin (Hannibal Buress) and Jerry (Jeremy Renner), have continued playing tag for 30 years. Their justification for continuing to play the game into their adult lives is based on the premise that “we don’t stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing”. That’s their slogan.
They only play the game for one month a year. It has really become an attempt to tag Jerry, whose claim to fame is that he has never, ever, in the entire time the group has played tag, from their childhood into adulthood, been tagged.
A news item about this game of adult tag was reported in the New York Times and forms the nucleus to the film, as the friends enlist the reporter who wrote the article to pursue Jerry.
During this one month a year, the group’s sole purpose in life is to tag Jerry. He avoids being tagged due to his high level of fitness and animal cunning.
The opportunity to change Jerry’s tag status is his upcoming wedding, when he will have to let down his guard.
The film becomes a series of set routines featuring lots of physical comedy of varying degrees of humour.
The gang devise devious schemes to outwit Jerry but he is always more adroit at playing the game than the rest of the group.
In order to throw the others off their game, he invites Cheryl, who was the object of Chilli and Callahan’s desire when they were teenagers, to the wedding. They both want to reignite a spark with her, which pits them against one another.
Of course, Jerry keeps avoiding their tag, which, in turn, sets up another sequence of pratfalls.
Even though TAG is yet another film based on a true story, you wouldn’t think that a game of tag lasting 30 years would be enough to sustain a film for 110 minutes. You’d be correct. It’s not a terrible film; neither is it a film with significant weight on its cinematic bones. It would have been more interesting and sustainable as a half hour television show.
