After one too many drinks, two parents come up with an elaborate plan to hide their ever-increasing financial difficulties from their daughter and judgemental social circle.
It is increasingly apparent why I was not aware of this film until months after its theatrical and physical releases. Drunk Parents is a bad film, simple as that. This 97-minute film has an incoherent plot, with the lowest-value comedy, and I really cannot fathom why it exists.
The only appeal to the film is in its cast. Alec Baldwin and Salma Hayek are our two main characters (I would struggle to justify calling them protagonists in this case), with Jim Gaffigan and Joe Manganiello in supporting roles. Even Will Ferrell manages to make a cameo, so you can't help but think that director Fred Wolf must have a lot of friends to keep getting these cheap comedy flicks made somehow (The House Bunny and Joe Dirt 2:Beautiful Loser are in his filmography).
The film has three main issues; the plot, the characters, and the comedy. The plot is incredibly thin. It spends no time trying to set up the story because there isn't one. Simply put, these parents like to drink, and need money to pay for tuition. There is no effort put into delving into the backstory of the characters, and worst of all is that Hayek and Baldwin's roles in the film are purely reactionary; they do not act in a way that drives the narrative, they are acted on by the environment and simply react to it. It is the simplest form of screenplay writing, and the least interesting to watch.
The characters themselves are caricatures, where most of their character development come from their attire and dialogue, rather than their behaviour, which created boring, predictable characters. While our main characters are more subtle in appearance, their over-the-top demeanour and general poor decision-making make them unlikeable in the eyes of the audience. When you don't know the direction of the film, and you don't care about the characters, there is little to make the audience want to watch the remainder of the film.
Lastly, the comedy is full of first draft-style comedy. When coming up with a scenario, your first thought is generally the most obvious one, and that makes it the more common option that has been overdone and will be less likely to be a successful source of comedy. With an over-reliance of low-brow humour and physical, slapstick comedy, there is no effort to create something smart. I would equate the humour in this film to that of Will Ferrel and John C. Reilly's Holmes & Watson. If you enjoyed that film, you may find this enjoyable.
The cinematography was uninspired, the score and soundtrack were not memorable enough to be able to discuss, the only good thing about the film was the acting. Alec Baldwin did his best, pulling off an almost 30 Rock-esque performance. Salma Hayek had a lot of energy in her performance, but the script did nothing for these actors. Drunk Parents is like a live adaptation of a recent Family Guy script; you know exactly what they were aiming for with their humour, and the story has so many unnecessary, and unrelated tangents, but in the end, zero laughs were had.
It's not funny. It's sad.