Brainless action comedy a fizzer

But somehow, the film is worse than all three of those earlier movies.

From director Luke Greenfield (who uses a clip from his own earlier film, The Girl Next Door, at one point in this film) and writer Neil Goldman (Scrubs, Shrinking), Playdate sees out-of-his-depth new stepdad Brian (Kevin James, Hitch) end up taking his kid Lucas (Benjamin Pajak, The Life of Chuck) to hang out with a father-and-son they meet at the park.

But this duo is not your average suburban family. The "dad" is Jeff (Alan Ritchson, Reacher), a former special operations soldier with a hankering to make a best friend, and CJ (Banks Pierce), a 12-year-old with inexplicable strength and stamina who may munch on the odd butterfly.

Brian finds Jeff and CJ to be a bit too odd for his tastes, but after Lucas begs to go over to their house, he relents in the hopes of forging a greater bond with the boy.

But they're barely five minutes into their playdate when things go awry and Jeff is bustling them all into a van to escape the clutches of the gun-toting dudes in black who are all of a sudden pursuing them.

As it turns out, CJ is not Jeff's son, but a kid he rescued from some sort of facility while he was working as a security guard out front.

The majority of the film is just a series of car chases, fights and comedy that mostly doesn't land.

The concept seems to be that dads are so inept at parenting that they'll accidentally abduct children and end up in the middle of a criminal conspiracy.

But even that estimation is putting far too much brain power into Playdate.

This is not a film that requires you to have any sort of intelligence. The editing work is especially poor, as it includes blatant continuity errors, like a bag of grapes turning into a bag of carrot sticks between shots, and hugely obvious use of stunt doubles (but not obvious enough that the stunt double is a gag in and of itself, like in a ZAZ film).

All you need to understand is cars go screech, guns go bang, things go boom.

Even a modicum of cleverness about the writing would be welcome, as Ritchson is in general a joy to watch.

As Reacher he is constrained by the character's taciturn nature, rarely getting a chance to let his natural charisma and penchant for comedy shine through. But in a film like this, he lets his silly side out, and that's nice to see.

It's just a shame that it's being used on such lacklustre material.

James is his usual self, perfectly adequate without being at all memorable. He is playing the grounded man opposite Ritchson's more boisterous character. They don't make for the most exciting buddy duo, but their chemistry isn't completely terrible.

Rounding out the cast is a series of oddly collated support stars. Most fitting is Sarah Chalke (Scrubs) as Brian's wife Emily, mother of Lucas, who has little to do but is her regular charming self. Then there's Isla Fisher as the leader of the "mama mafia", a group of mums who hang out together drinking wine while their kids play in the park. Fisher is a funny performer, but a face as famous as hers feels out of place in this tiny role. There's also Stephen Root as Jeff's father (in no universe, known or unknown, does he father Ritchson), Alan Tudyk as a tech billionaire, Paul Walter Hauser in a glorified cameo and Hiro Kanagawa as the big bad (here we have the opposite problem of Fisher being too famous a face - Kanagawa is not famous enough).

Aside from some chuckle-worthy moments and a good soundtrack choice or two, Playdate is dead in the water.