Movie Review: 'Unplugging' is Unfunny

Unplugging is a dimwitted sitcom premise desperately stretched out to feature length. The premise of this new comedy starring Eva Longoria and Matt Walsh could barely sustain an episode of insert modern family comedy here and yet someone thought it would make a good feature length film. They were wrong, very, very wrong. Unplugging is a tedious 90 plus minute slog through an unfunny dad joke.

Eva Longoria stars in Unplugging as Jeanine, a nightmare of a wife and co-worker. As a wife and mother she’s constantly on her phone, in bed in the middle of the night, in moments when her daughter, who's not really a character in this movie, is trying to talk to her, and really any minute she’s on screen in this movie. If Jeanine isn’t on her phone she’s whining about not being able to be on her phone.

Jeanine is also established as someone everyone hates at work. Jeanine’s inability to unplug from her phone has made her the most hated person in her office. Her secretary, the most relatable character in this movie, despite having only four of five lines of dialogue, practically begs Jeanine not to speak to him. Jeanine’s boss nearly has to fire Jeanine because she bothers other employees at all hours of the day. She settles on sending her on vacation for two weeks, though that doesn't stop Jeanine from still trying contact her fellow employees even while on her imposed vacation.

Matt Walsh plays Jeanine’s husband Dan, a hot sauce entrepreneur. He’s also obsessed with his phone and screen time. He plays video games and ignores his wife and daughter. That changes when Dan’s friendly UPS guy pal, Juan (Al Madrigal), dies not long after imparting wisdom to Dan about getting off of his phone and back into his life. This leads Dan to book a vacation for himself and Jeanine in a cabin in the woods in an area known for having almost no cellphone reception.

This sequence carries the only charming scene in the movie as David Keith pops up as a bar owner with great stories and an old record player that leads to a brief dance party. Keith is having a ball in this role but his performance is limited to just a couple moments. His presence can’t break the monotony of the rest of Unplugging which consists of checking phones, whining about phones not working, and wandering around trying to find a signal.

The whole movie is building toward the remarkably, unbearably, obvious moral about how people are too connected to their devices, phones, tablets, video games and so on. I know the phrase 'Ok Boomer' is already out of fashion after its brief cultural prominence but, truly, Unplugging is the ultimate in OK Boomer energy. Unplugging is a movie made by and for angry grandpa's who can’t stand those darn kids and their phones.

The cringe of Unplugging is perhaps the film’s most notable aspect. The movie is downright embarrassing in its obviousness and thudding in its attempts at comedy. Imagine a lengthy dad joke that begins with the phrase ‘Back in my Day’ and you can get a sense of how extraordinarily boring Unplugging is. There is not one laugh in this movie. Scenes pass, incidents of complaining about a lack of phone service happen constantly and scenes peter out to a dimwitted end without a single moment of energy or invention.

I haven’t even mentioned Lea Thompson, national treasure that she is, trying to give this movie some life. Thompson goes way outside of her comfort zone in Unplugging playing a cranky conspiracy theorist nutjob who never misses a moment to antagonize our protagonists for their dedication to their phones and their status as outsiders in her backwoods home. Thompson’s character is a series of unfunny gags about drones, government conspiracies, and her having a raccoon as a pet and as wild as that sounds, it’s somehow never funny. Thompson is deeply dedicated to each bit, she’s giving it her all, but the movie continuously lets her down.

Unplugging isn’t completely miserable but it edges up to completely miserable. In the end, the movie lands somewhere on the spectrum between unendurably dimwitted and desperately mediocre. Unplugging arrives in theaters nationwide on April 22nd. 2022.