As director Calmatic’s House Party rolls through its first act, you can feel things clicking. Protagonists Kevin and Damon, played respectively by Jacob Latimore and Tosin Cole, are introduced as talented-but-struggling party promoters in Los Angeles, and while they make for a traditional introvert/extrovert pairing, their charismatic personalities and rapport are quickly established with sharp writing and funny performances. The movie gets you invested in the characters, building high personal stakes for them as well as clear arcs, and the prospect of seeing them in over their heads as an event they throw spins out of control is exciting. You anticipate not only things getting wild, but seeing how Kevin and Damon try to put out a wide variety of fires so that they don’t end up facing extreme consequences.
Unfortunately, it’s in delivering on those promises that House Party struggles. While the film needs escalating insanity and silliness to keep the plot moving forward, that’s an energy that it’s unable to properly capture and sustain. It plays around with a handful of hilarious bits and certainly does hit some satisfying extremes, but they represent small spikes of entertainment as the movie primarily plateaus across its second and third acts – ultimately resulting in it being more disappointing than fun.
A reboot of the comedy trilogy from the ‘90s starring Christopher "Kid" Reid and Christopher "Play" Martin, House Party opens with Kevin and Damon in respective binds. The former, a single father living with his parents, is an aspiring musician who needs $10,000 for his daughter’s preschool tuition, and the latter loses a business opportunity for the duo when he makes the mistake of messing around with the cousin of an acquaintance (Allen Maldonado). Only further making matters worse, they end up losing their side gig working on with a cleaning service when a surveillance video is discovered of them smoking pot and messing around during a job.
They figure that throwing a massive, celebrity-filled mansion party is the perfect solution to both of their problems – and desperation turns to inspiration when they realize that their most recent cleaning gig has given them full access to the home of LeBron James while the NBA star is away on a two-week meditation retreat. Kevin and Damon put on the event hoping they can make the money they need to both solve their problems and properly clean the house after the event, but, of course, things don’t end up going according to plan.
House Party is at its best when it gets really weird, and it doesn’t do it enough.
To the credit of Calmatic and screenwriters Stephen Glover and Jamal Olori, House Party does end up going to some ridiculous and creative places during its runtime; the problem is in its pacing and escalation. There are wonderful and weird ideas in play – like the DJ (D.C. Young Fly) becoming convinced he’s a time traveler when high, a domesticated koala roaming the property, and a side adventure featuring a party hosted by the Illuminati – but they are more gags than plot developments, and they don’t deliver a level of chaos that the film needs.
Despite the fact that there are opportunities for conflict everywhere as hundreds of people pack into an NBA legend’s fancy home, very little is ever executed in the name of moving the story forward. This is best evidenced by the fact that we really only get the message that the event is getting too crazy when Kevin finds Damon toward the middle of the movie and tells him so. (Paintings are knocked off walls and there is a guy shown drinking alcohol out of a fancy vase… but this is a depicted party at LeBron James’ house where only a total of three guests venture into the home’s off-limits zones.) Nothing builds on anything, and it makes the film feel satisfied merely being intermittently funny.
Jacob Latimore and Tosin Cole are both excellent and have great chemistry as on-screen buds in House Party.
Hilarity may be sporadic in House Party, but where it does get consistency is from its two leads. Unlike Christopher "Kid" Reid and Christopher "Play" Martin, who starred in the original five years after the release of their first single as a hip-hop duo, Jacob Latimore and Tosin Cole are first-time collaborators in the 2023 movie, but you wouldn’t know it from their work, as their characters’ bond has the depth of a friendship formed in childhood. Their individual charismas are magnetic, with Cole being the flashy sparkplug and Latimore providing the heart that grounds the story’s stakes, and it’s because of them that the film keeps you invested.
With their personalities, there are some clichéd Type A/Type B clashes that arise as drama, but the naturalness of the two stars’ chemistry adds a depth that makes it feel real, and they have synchronous comedic timing that adds snap to every scene they’re in together.
Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi ends up being the film’s best scene stealer.
Terrific as Jacob Latimore and Tosin Cole are, however, the real reason to see House Party is to witness the work of Scott “Kid Cudi” Mescudi, who plays an… interesting version of himself and steals every single scene he is in. His presence at first plays like a cameo, appearing as an awkward wallflower at the party who is just trying to get a poem he’s written to LeBron James, but his return later in the film is phenomenal and it’s the best performance of its kind since Neil Patrick Harris’ Neil Patrick Harris in the Harold & Kumar trilogy. That’s as much as I’ll say, as it’s best to know as little as possible going in, so it’s recommended to be spoiler-phobic in that department.
The best aspects of House Party are fantastic – including its stars, select gags, and a wide variety of cameos – but its inconsistency is frustrating and disappointing. There is a surprising amount to like about the film, particularly as a comedy remake that is being released in mid-January, but it’s undercooked in enough important areas to hold it back from being considered a full success.
