Boys-behaving-badly comedy 'Big Bear' never figures out what it wants to be

By Katie Walsh

Sept. 21, 2017 6 AM PT

Actor Joey Kern, known best for “Super Troopers” and “Cabin Fever,” heads behind the camera for his directorial debut, “Big Bear,” the story of a bungled bachelor party in the mountain town. Kern also wrote and stars in the film, as the groom-to-be Joe, and he’s assembled a pack of impishly likable character actors — Tyler Labine, Adam Brody and Zachary Knighton — to play his mischievous friends, Nick, Eric and Colin, who are obviously far more stoked on the party than he is. It’s a featherweight “Boys’ Trip” that coasts on the charisma of its performers.

The intent of the weekend is for Joe to “wake up feeling so hungover and guilty you never want to be a bachelor again,” but it takes a hard left with the reveal that Joe’s life is crumbling beneath him. Is it even a “bachelor party” if the groom-to-be just got dumped? Soon, the boys-will-be-boys antics take a dark turn, involving kidnapping, revenge plots and reckoning with life’s greater heartbreaks and mysteries.

Kern and crackerjack editor Franklin Peterson bring a lively pace to the proceedings, aided by the troupe of comically agile man-boys. But the film doesn’t seem to know what it wants to express — is it a Boys Gone Wild trip into the heart of darkness? Or an exploration of the emotional complexities of long-term commitment? Eventually, it loses steam while riding a line between outrageousness and earnestness and never quite comes together.

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