As a guy who spent most of his life casually NOT watching the original House Party, I finally decided to check it out three years ago. It was fine… maybe I wasn’t the target market, maybe it just wasn’t the ’90s any longer. But I have no lingering nostalgia for it.

But I’ll yell ya, this remake makes me have retroactive nostalgia for it. Jeesh… what a mediocre, kind of desperate “pick me pick me!” bouncing in the seat, hand raised kind of film. Stock it so full of cameos and hope that someone will think that’s enough for a full length film.

Certainly the two leads weren’t enough… how do you replace the charismatic Kid ‘n Play with these two random dudes? They have good credits to their names, but anything that makes them interesting as actors was sucked out of this film.

I did chuckle a handful of times early on and there’s a pretty amusing nutty side mission in the third act, but for the most part, it’s just kind of dull. You could argue I’m not the target market (once again), but I’m not sure that’s a good defense.

Certainly there’s a lot of cameos in this film, most of whom I recognized as names, a handful I could even confirm are the person they say they are. You got yer LeBron James, Mya, Kid Cudi, Snoop Dogg (because of course), Lil Wayne, Mark Cuban, and a bunch of others. I guess when LeBron is producing and calls you up, you show up on the day.

Overall, it’s not a particularly good film though playing spot-the-celeb might be fun. But it’s otherwise kind of shockingly charisma-free for a remake of a film starring Kid ‘n Play.

Score: 64