In this movie, Brad is happily married to his wife named Sara (played by Linda Cardellini,) as he tries to earn the respect and acceptance of Sara’s two children named Dylan, (played by Owen Vaccaro,) and Megan, (played by Scarlett Estevez.) The children are shown to be mildly hostile and disrespectful to Brad as shown in the movie’s opening credits. These credits show numerous hand drawn pictures which are revealed to have been drawn by Megan of the family living happily only for Brad to be shown in the picture having been violently attacked in some way, either by a knife or having been set on fire, etc. As the opening credits end, Brad calls Megan’s attention to the last picture which depicts him having been stabbed in the eye with a knife with a pile of brown on his head. Brad mistakes this for dog poop, which Megan confirms is homeless man poop. She also refers to him as “Mr Whitaker” instead of Brad.

Over time, Brad is able to gain the children’s respect for and this is shown by Dylan confiding only in Brad about his issues with bullies while Megan asks Brad to be her date to the upcoming daddy daughter dance in her biological father’s absence.

Things end up going south for Brad as the children’s biological father calls to announce he is coming for a visit which Brad believes to be a treat for the kids, though Sara is not happy with him coming to visit. As for the reason for this, it was probably explained in the movie but I didn’t understand her reasoning. She tells Brad to get rid of him as quickly as possible with Brad agreeing to set up a proper visitation schedule. 

The children’s father’s arrival basically sets up the rest of the movie as the two men are shown trying to one up each other in order to gain the respect of the children. While Dusty’s attempts seemed superior to Brad’s, (this is just my opinion,) Brad was not to be outdone. The two men began competing over who had the best way to put the children to sleep with Brad’s attempting being goodnight back scratches and back rubs as well as eskimo kisses while I believe Dusty may have won this battle by offering each one of them money if they go to sleep right away.

The competition continued the next morning when Brad woke up to find Dusty in the kitchen having bought Cinnabon for the family, though he claimed he baked them himself in order to try to win the battle. This lead to a funny scene later in the film where Brad called the Cinnabon head office and asked them:

“How difficult would it be to bake a batch of your Cinnabon? Do you need a special oven?” 

It is later revealed by Dusty that he did buy them.

A scene in the film shows Dylan crying over the bullies. Where Brad tells Dylan not to be violent when retaliating against them, Dusty says that he should be and even goes as far as to say he wants to ensure their parents/caregivers die too. This to me shows that Dusty proves himself to be more of a man than Brad is.

Throughout the film, he one ups Brad in many ways, including finishing a tree house that Brad has started as a project with the kids.

My favourite scene in this movie was the scene at the basketball game. After decorating the house as if it was Christmas and buying Megan a pony and Dylan tickets to the basketball game, Brad is insulted when he learns that Megan has asked Dusty to take her to the daddy daughter dance instead of him. He then gets angry that no matter how much does to try and fain the respect of the children, he is always outshined by Dusty. This is once again proved to be the case when Dusty’s uses his connections to get the family a seat with the team. As they get up to go to their new seat, Brad blurts out that the scalper charged him $18,000 for the tickets and this gets him in trouble with Sara.

While sitting in his original seat and drunk, Brad finds himself with the winning ticket to be able to win a family trip. After humiliating himself and the family on the microphone, Brad takes the shot and hits a cheerleader in the head after which the ball is taken from him. After taking the ball back, he shoots again, this time hitting a disabled person in the head who is in a wheelchair and then getting thrown out.

By the end of the end of the film, Dusty has given Brad his proper due as a step father and says that he is a good example of what a step father should be.

This movie was good for laughs especially since I’m a big fan of Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg. However, my biggest criticism of this movie is that throughout the film, Brad appears to be fighting a losing battle as it is almost a given that a child will always tend to love their real father as long as he is in the picture as opposed to their step father. In other words, I don’t think there’s a way in which Brad could have succeeded, no matter how hard he tried to win over Sara’s kids as long as Dusty was present in their lives.

All in all, this was a good movie and I would surely recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it yet.