Here we are, back at it again! Let’s find out what the next ingredient in our 2025 Review Stew will be. This week we have a movie that has been on my watchlist for a while but hasn’t popped up on streaming until recently. A movie based off of an article about a bunch men playing a childhood game, that’s right…Tag (2018).
Title: Tag
Director: Jeff Tomsic
Released: May 30, 2018 (Australia)
Runtime: 1 hour 40 minutes
Available to stream on: Prime Video
Odds are, when you were growing up, you played a game of tag with your friends. You might even still have a close relationship with those same friends. However, I doubt you’re playing tag with those friends thirty years later.
There is one exception. The friend group of Hoagie (Ed Helms), Callahan (Jon Hamm), Chilli (Jake Johnson), Sable (Hannibal Buress) and Jerry (Jeremy Renner) are still very much involved in a game of tag that has continued on since childhood.
But how in the world are they able to keep the game going as adults? It’s simple, the game is only active for one month out of the year. At the end of the month, whoever is ‘it’ carries that shame until the game restarts the next year.
Throughout the history of their game, only one of them has somehow managed to remain untagged. Jerry has a perfect streak and his friends are determined to see it come to an end. When they see his wedding announcement in the paper, which they weren’t invited to, they collectively decide that the streak dies at Jerry’s wedding.
With it basically being four against one, five when you include Hoagie’s ruthlessly competitive wife Anna (Isla Fisher), surely the odds are in the group’s favor…right?
The premise of Tag (2018) is absolutely absurd. However, learning it was loosely based on a true story piqued my curiosity enough to check it out.
There’s no misdirection from what you see in the trailer, it’s literally an hour and forty-minutes of friends playing a game of tag.
Luckily, the ensemble cast has incredible chemistry which allowed me to buy-in and go along with their adventures. The degree to which they bust chops feels as genuine as it would amongst a group of longterm friends.
Another highlight for me was the scenes of tag, or attempted tag, with Jerry. Time slows down and Jerry’s super abilities to evade his friends are on full display. He correctly predicts how each of his friends would approach him and is able to ward off their attempts to break his streak.
That being said, this movie should have been a tight eighty-minutes, or maybe even something similar to a recurring SNL digital short. While there are funny parts throughout, there isn’t enough meat on the bone to justify the runtime.
Unfortunately, for as much as I enjoyed parts of Tag (2018), I can’t say that I’d strongly recommend it.
However, if you’re looking for something to be able to turn on so you can turn off your brain, this is exactly what the doctor ordered.
So, have you seen Tag (2018)? If so, let me hear your thoughts on it!
You can leave a comment below or find me over on Bluesky.
As always, if you want to see what else I’ve been watching, you can follow me over on Letterboxd.