Kevin (Maxwell Simkins) is having a bad day. He's been recorded on phone doing a funky dance in the bathroom at school, a video that's about to go viral. His sister, Clancy (Sadie Stanley), is also having a bad day. Their mother (Margot, played by Malin Åkerman) doesn't let them own phones, doesn't approve of social media, and isn't letting Clancy go to a great party with her friend, Mim (Cree Cicchino). Kevin is having a friend, Lewis (Lucas Jaye), sleep over, but things soon get crazy when their parents are whisked away by criminals to get involved with a robbery. It turns out that mum had a secret life before becoming a mum, a life that even her husband, Ron (Ken Marino), was unaware of. Margo is forced to work with her ex-boyfriend, Leo (Joe Manganiello), while the kids work together to save their parents.
A first feature script from Sarah Rothschild (well, a first to be made into a film anyway), The Sleepover is a lightweight bit of fun that is lifted above the level of average by a great cast. Director Trish Sie handles everything competently enough, moving from one unbelievable moment to the next with the right mix of laughs and zippy pacing to stop viewers from overthinking things and dismissing the entire film. It's not aiming to be a gritty drama, it's aiming to provide laughs for everyone.
Although the adults do good work here, with Ken Marino a highlight, as usual (especially in any scenes that have him being jealous of Manganiello), it's the kids who are the real stars here. Stanley is the main character when it comes to a personal journey, discovering the reality of her mother's life and why she has made their life a certain way, and she does good work in her role. Simkins is consistently hilarious, whether he's engaging in childishly fantastic lies or swaggering past adults with an air of confidence that he really shouldn't possess. Cicchino is enjoyably sassy and attempting to stay cool at all times, while Jaye is the polar opposite, having spent his life coddled by a mother who has warned him of the dangers of almost every situation he might ever find himself in. Åkerman convinces as the housewife/mother with a dangerous past, armed with a skillset that comes to the fore in the second half of the movie, and she's a great actress to set at the centre of things, always able to bring a mix of toughness and sensitivity that has served her well in the few roles that use her in the best way.
There are no surprises here, even the one main twist is eye-rollingly obvious, and no punchlines that can't be predicted by set-ups dotted throughout most of the first half of the movie, but that's not a major problem when you're after something simple, light, and entertaining. Which this is. The worst moment may be a fight scene soundtracked by the song "I Want Candy" (faltering because it attempts to make some characters look cool in fighting mode while letting Marino continue to pratfall alongside them), but it's a small mis-step. The biggest problem the film has is that it is one in a long line of similar comedy-action-thrillers that we've seen over the last decade, a sub-genre that seems to be the perfect choice when streaming services look for extra content.
7/10
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