“THE ATROCIOUS PLAYDATE IS A COMEDY BLACK HOLE FROM WHICH NO BUDDY CAN ESCAPE”

There are bad movies, disappointing movies, forgettable movies — and then there are movies that seem almost engineered in a laboratory to test the strength of your patience, your dignity, and your commitment to finishing what you’ve started. Director Luke Greenfield’s new Prime Video action-comedy Playdate lands squarely, defiantly, in that last category.

Within the first 15 minutes, I found myself jotting down a simple question in the margins of my notes: “Is this going to be genuinely insufferable?”

By the halfway mark, the answer had turned into a bold, unwavering “yes.”

Playdate stars Kevin James and Alan Ritchson as mismatched dads who stumble into a chaotic conspiracy while trying to bond with their equally mismatched sons. It’s the kind of premise that could have been charming, silly, or even warmly nostalgic — a return to the buddy-action staples of the early 2000s with a family-friendly twist. Instead, what we get is a sprawling, directionless slog that mistakes noise for comedy, chaos for story, and relentless mugging for actual character work.

To be clear: this is not a “so bad it’s good” scenario.

This is not the kind of gleeful trainwreck that inspires midnight screenings or earns cult appreciation through sheer earnest failure. Those films, for all their flaws, have soul. Playdate has none. It is instead a startlingly hollow, overly sanitized piece of algorithmic content, a film that feels less written than assembled — stitched together from tropes, clichés, and tonal whiplash as if by a machine instructed to approximate human humor.

Kevin James, who is capable of genuine warmth and comedic timing, is stranded in a screenplay that gives him nothing but awkward fretting and repetitive slapstick. His subdued performance is not the problem; the problem is how aggressively the film wastes him. Alan Ritchson, meanwhile, brings his hulking charisma and surprising comedic chops, but even he can’t overcome the editing style, which chops scenes into frantic fragments of slapstick, fistfights, and dad jokes that land with a thud.

The direction, reminiscent of early Michael Bay but stripped of energy or purpose, compounds the issue. Shots flicker by in rapid, meaningless succession — quick-cuts piled on quick-cuts, as if trying desperately to distract from the absence of substance. There is no rhythm, no comedic timing, no breathing room. Everything feels rushed and yet somehow interminable.

The writing fares even worse. Jokes appear without setups; setups appear without punchlines; dialogue loops in circles. Characters behave like caricatures, not people. The emotional beats feel like placeholders. The plot — mercenaries, secret identities, improbable conspiracies — is so self-serious and yet so half-baked that it borders on surrealism. And not the intentional kind.

In over a decade of reviewing films, I have seen technical disasters with heart, misguided passion projects with charm, and low-budget blunders that at least tried something new. Playdate is none of these.

This is a film that seems profoundly uninterested in itself. It does not fail because it aimed high and missed; it fails because it barely aimed at all. The result is a slick, shiny emptiness — the cinematic equivalent of a lukewarm microwavable dinner: edible, perhaps, but utterly devoid of satisfaction.

Even the moments that almost work — a surprisingly funny Ritchson dance sequence, a handful of enjoyable cameos — are swallowed up by the surrounding sludge. Nothing connects. Nothing pays off. Everything feels like a draft of a draft of a pitch meeting.

Is Playdate one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen? That depends on the definition of “worst.” Technically, no — I have seen films with worse acting, worse effects, worse plots. But I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a movie quite so devoid of value, so fundamentally uninterested in entertaining, surprising, or meaningfully engaging its audience.

In that respect, Playdate may represent a new low in the streaming-era cycle of disposable films created simply to fill space — content designed not to delight, but to occupy.

And that, in its own way, is far more depressing than a traditional bad movie. A bad movie can be enjoyed, reclaimed, even celebrated. Playdate, however, feels like a warning: a reminder that when cinema becomes content, joy becomes optional.

Watch it if you must — but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Some black holes you simply can’t escape.