Let's be honest. The expectations for a Kevin James comedy aren't exactly high. 

They're literally "just make me laugh." 

Playdate doesn't come close to meeting those expectations. 

To say that Playdate is one of the worst films of 2025 feels like an understatement, an acknowledgement that there's something of cinematic value here. I suppose there is, or maybe there is, because we do, in fact, get a glimpse of an Alan Ritchson outside of his usual action roles and even within this mess of a motion picture that has potential. 

Not here, mind you. 

Kevin James is Brian, a recently unemployed accountant and new stepfather to Lucas (Benjamin Pajak), whom we catch on pretty early is devoid of anything resembling athletic tendencies in favor of his artistic side. Ritchson is Jeff, also a stay-at-home dad whose "son," CJ (Banks Pierce), is mysteriously devoid of anything resembling childlike qualities. It's only moments, seriously, before Jeff is insisting that the two dads take their kiddos on a, you guessed it, playdate. 

The action comedy that follows is mindlessly predictable, unnecessarily meanspirited, and vacant of anything resembling decent action sequences. Darran Tiernan's lensing is so shaky I at times thought we were in the midst of an Earthquake remake with Jeff Cardoni's original score amplifying the film's nonsensically over-the-top antics. 

In a world where straight-to-streaming isn't always a bad thing anymore, Playdate comes off like a mid-80's straight to VHS mind-number.

The comedy doesn't fare any better. With "blink and you'll be glad you missed 'em" appearances by the likes of Alan Tudyk, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Root, and Isla Fisher among others, Playdate gives everybody involved one note to play and everybody plays that one note over and over and over again. 

And over. 

I'm not sure at what point everyone involved figured out that Playdate was taking a cinematic death spiral, but there's an acute obviousness that radiates from James, whom I ordinarily do find quite funny in an everyman sort of way, and it's painful, downright painful, watching him try to salvage something out of this mess. Ritchson fares a bit better. In fact, he's the sole reason for the one-star rating. There's something perversely glorious about Ritchson giving us something he's never let us see before, and while I'm convinced even he at some point realized this was a mess there's something admirable at the way he keeps careening his goofiness into new territory. 

The film's real sins, at least for me, are its simple ugliness. Working from a script by Neil Goldman, director Luke Greenfield seems bent on seeing how much depravity we'll laugh at before we call it quits. I mean, okay, I get it. There's supposed to be some sort of moral tone playing here. However, the notes hit false and because the comedy falls so flat the film's tonal choices are inspired and often downright ugly including a scene toward the end in which the Jeff we've come to know massively contradicts everything we've come to know about him in the worst kinds of ways. 

Hey, listen. I'm the first critic who stepped up to give Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star a decent rating. I've got a pretty high tolerance for cinematic dreck. However, once in a while a film comes along that's so bad that even I can't manage to say something good about it. 

That film is Playdate. 

Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic