Blockers Review: 7 Ups & 2 Downs

2. The Surprisingly Strong Character Development

It would've been easy for a movie with this premise to pigeonhole its characters into neat boxes in order to allow the comedy shenanigans to take centre stage, but the script refuses to boil the kids and their parents down to hoary stereotypes.

Yes, the six main characters are all recognisable and identifiable versions of people we all know, but because the script gives each of them due attention and examines why they are the way they are, they feel more palpably human than you'd reasonably expect from a studio sex comedy.

Cena's father character, for instance, could easily have just been a loud, brutish grunt with zero shading, but his tough-guy facade is mixed with plenty of sensitivity, often played for laughs but not always.

There's a clear, active effort here to upend character cliches and demonstrate the multi-faceted nature of people, which given the central generational clash between parents and their kids is wholly appropriate.