We've all wanted to stay close with our childhood friends forever but very few of us are actually lucky to make that dream a reality no matter how much we want to or how much we try because life happens and after a point of time, we have no choice but to accept reality. That's exactly the case with Hogan, Callahan, Chilli, Sable and Jerry, a group of friends who used to play tag together when they were kids. The movie revolves around a simple quote by George Bernard Shaw that says 'We don't stop playing because we grow old, we grow old because we stop playing'.
This particular group of friends decide to honor that quote and they never stopped playing tag and they continued playing through high school, college and through work. Since it would be diabolical to play all the time, they make a pact that they'd play every year during the month of May. While there are plenty of friends who want to meet and catch up doing some kind of activity every year, this particular group decide to use 'tag' as a reason to stay in touch. So this movie takes place during the month of May and a reporter happens to be around and decides to tell their story to the world.
Jerry is the king of the game because all these years, he has never been tagged even once and manages to maintain this perfect record for almost thirty years. Every year, the other four come up with all sorts of plans but Jerry always manages to slip past them, almost as if he's some kind of superhero, maybe being great at tag is hawkeye's superpower? Now we know what he was up to during Infinity War and Mission Impossible Fallout. I will never get over the fact that he wasn't in both of those spectacular movies. Jerry does this amazing thing while he thinks when he plans to make a fool out of his friends though it looks pretty obvious that it was taken straight out of Sherlock Holmes when he thinks. Renner may be cool, but not cooler than Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes.
Although the plot is amazing, this movie attempts to do great things but fails to hit a few notes, maybe it was the editing, maybe the soundtrack or the writing. At every point of time, I expected to see an amazing scene that would make up for it all but that scene never actually came and in the end, I was a bit disappointed because I was left wanting more. Not sure if its just me or if the movie actually had a problem but then again, as they say, no movie is without a sin.
Tag is based on a true story, which means there was a group of fully grown individuals who met up every year during March without making any excuses to play tag all month. After watching this, I just felt bad for not trying to do something as crazy as this to make my friendships last longer because I wanted my childhood friends to be with me forever too. This movie taught me that it's perfectly fine to stay crazy and not grow up because of the fear of judgment. Kids should stay kids and nothing should kill the kid in every one of us, let alone judgment because our childhood is invariably the best time of our lives. So maybe next time I stop myself from doing something crazy, I probably won't because these friends have motivated me to cut myself some slack. Maybe we should all take a page from 'tag' and let some of our younger selves take over for a while.
So overall, the movie was fun, taught us a thing or two but at no point did it stop to talk about how difficult life is or just have a normal conversation among the friends and I felt like there was enough room for that. That should have been a bare minimum for any movie to qualify as a friendship movie and maybe that's one of the reasons that it didn't get great reviews. People like being emotionally invested in any movie, they want to feel what the actors are going through but unfortunately, apart from the ending, there wasn't a single moment of comfortable silence, a scene about a traumatic incident or a difficult time they had to go through when they were younger. Sure, there were several trips down memory lane this but none of them were worth remembering.
The actors did a fine job, it was a treat to see Jeremy Renner shine on so many occasions because his absence in both Infinity War and Mission Impossible Fallout made me want to see what he was up to in the meantime, serving as one of the reasons why I saw this. The presence of the reporter, Rebecca was justified, at several times she was the person we could all relate to but this movie could have been much better than it already was if they had just got in a few more scenes with emotions and realism. There is literally a guy who is broke, divorced and addicted to drugs but never for a moment did he actually express that he's finding it hard to live and the other friends didn't seem to care and that's not something friends let happen. This and a few more complaints but overall, this movie was fun.
VERDICT
7.4/10
Despite its flaws, this isn't a movie I'll forget anytime soon. Definitely worth a few more viewings.
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