Vacation Friends stars Lil Rel Howery and Yvonne Orji as an in-control couple on vacation at a Mexican resort. They run into an irrepressible and excitable and extra x 5 couple played by John Cena and Meredith Hagner. They are at first turned off by these very enthusiastic and possibly crazy people… but eventually get sucked into their weird lives. But when the vacation ends, they think the friendship is over. But you can’t keep a good John Cena down and soon they are showing up in their real lives, driving them extra crazy.

I kind of really dug the first half of this movie at the resort. There’s something infectiously awesome about John Cena’s good guy mania that’s weirdly earnest and exciting. I never knew I wanted to see this good natured and manically optimistic version of Cena. Yes, he goes to 15 when he only needed to go to 11… and by 15, I mean 20. Or 50. It can be a bit much but it was a lot of fun. And playing off Lil Rel – who is the straight man this time – worked. I laughed quite a bit.

But then the movie gets to its point as it rotates back to their regular lives and Cena and Hagner show up at their wedding. This second half of the film has its fun moments too but I’m afraid it overplays its hand. Cena and Hagner are so weirdly nice that the movie has to work hard to try to force me to hate them and it makes Lil Rel’s character a jerk to do it. The film sacrifices its leads in order to try to make their story ideas work. And it damages the movie and makes it feel forced and stretched.

I liked enough of this movie to still recommend it. The cast all work well individually and together and there’s just something infectious about the crazy. I just wish the premise of the movie – you can have vacation friends who don’t work as real friends – was handled better. I got aggravated watching this comedy and that’s not the right tone to have taken.

Score: 78