A bank manager discovers his fiancée's parents may not be who they say they are in The Out-Laws.
(Streaming on Netflix)
The Out-Laws is a formulaic American comedy resting on two ideas.
First, there's the old "meet the parents" plot, where our hero doesn't get on with the prospective in-laws. And second, there are the comedy stylings of one Adam Devine.
You may remember Adam Devine as the annoying character in the Pitch Perfect movies. OK, that doesn't narrow it down, I realise, but he's the particularly annoying character in the Pitch Perfect movies.
In The Out-Laws, he plays Owen, a bank manager. He's engaged to Parker, who doesn't seem to have a job.
They meet Parker's mysterious parents who've been away for years, we're told, doing good works in the Amazon Basin.
Anyway, Billy and Lilly are back - Pierce Brosnan sporting an unlikely Frank Zappa beard and moustache, and an even less likely Scottish accent, and Ellen Barkin, wearing a pained expression that gets worse as the film continues.
Much of the pain comes courtesy of Owen the bank manager, who turns out to have equally painful parents. Richard Kind and Julie Hagerty clearly think slightly desperate ad-libbing may help, but of course, they've seen the script.
Anyway, the plot lumbers apace - did I mention Owen was a bank manager?
OMG! His bank is robbed by two people - one male, one female - heavily masked and voice modified. And even hiding under a desk, Owen can't help thinking they seem oddly familiar.
Surely not. Surely there's no chance that his soon-to-be In-laws are in fact Outlaws, as in the title of this one-joke high concept?
Thanks, we get it. Enter a helpful policeman who explains that these bank robbers are none other than the famous Ghost Bandits.
Though since the Bandits have - spoiler alert - been hiding out in the Amazon Basin for several years, I can't see how they've managed to sustain that notoriety for so long.
No matter. Having established that the In-Laws and the Ghost Bandits are two and the same, the plot gains an extra twist.
She's a hilarious, ethnic villain called Rehan. We know she's the actual baddie because she amusingly kills people. Unlike Billy and Lilly who mostly just rob their banks and swear a lot.
Villain Rehan kidnaps Parker the fiancée.
This provides an excuse for Owen the bank manager and Billy and Lilly the bank robbers to combine forces and rob another bank for the hostage money. It also gets Parker out of the way who's the least funny character in the film so far.
As you can see this is saying something.
So now we step up a few gears. There are wacky bank robberies. There are wacky car chases. There are wacky fight scenes, as well as a few wacky murders of non-speaking extras.
And there's one James Bond joke, possibly slipped in by Ellen Barkin and Pierce Brosnan when director Tyler Spindell wasn't looking.
It may or may not surprise you to learn that The Out-Laws was produced by Adam Sandler no less.
And it's an indication of how little fun I was having that halfway through I found myself wondering whether it might have been marginally better if Sandler himself had been in it.
I'm not sure anyone would have helped, frankly. The Out-Laws is one of those Netflix films that looks good on the page, going in - I assume that explains its chart-topping status for a couple of weeks.
Algorithms only measure whether you watched it. They don't measure what you actually thought of it. That's your job, I'm afraid.
