Movie Review – House Party (2023)

Release Date: January 13, 2023

Production Companies: Warner Bros./New Line Cinema/SpringHill Company

First and foremost, I must start by saying that I do not have anything against movie remakes. Many movie fans (or at least, the very vocal minority on social media) tend to get angry, and I mean angry when a remake (even if it has a different story, or at the very least, a different adaptation of an already-existing property) is announced or will be made. I mean, hell, I remember some lady on Facebook dismissing the 2018 “Tomb Raider” film as a remake, only to find that she didn’t know it was initially a video game. I mean, hell, some people don’t even realize that the 1983 “Scarface” film was a remake of the 1932 film of the same name. There are some remakes that I actually did like, some even better than the original.

However, two years ago, I recall seeing the trailer for this movie and thinking, “Huh?” I even wondered how a movie like this would work in today’s world, even though “House Party 5” was released a decade prior, not to mention that there was also “Project X” around that same time. The early-2010s, while not much different than today’s world, it could be argued that there would be some difference if you look closely, but I’m not getting to that. I will note that I should have mentioned this in my “House Party 2” review – how having an underground party would not work nowadays because people tend to post things all over social media. I remember an old friend mentioning something like that a long time ago. Things like this do happen in this film, as well as the fifth film. Funnily enough, it was said in one scene of this film that there shouldn’t be any social media posts or anything like that. Yeah, like anybody would abide to that.

But really, I feel like I am going off-tangent, even though what I said is a bit relevant to the topic.

Before I get into the plot and whether or not this movie was decent or as bad as the fourth and fifth films, I will say that I found out that this movie was originally supposed to be released for Max (or as it was known at the time, HBO Max) in the summer of 2022, but the plan was scrapped. WB planned to release it in theaters later that year, but then finally it got a January release. Yes, one of the dump months, even though I have seen some good ones released in that month. Really, I think it could have benefitted better as a streaming-only release.

I know I have done this many times before where I get into other things before talking about the movie itself. Well, here we are now. So the plot this time has two guys, one is single father Kevin (Jacob Latimore) and the other is Damon (Tosin Cole). Let me just say that say that the pronunciation of “Damon” is “Duh-MAHN,” because it is a running gag in this film. Kevin is a beat-maker and producer and wants to get his music off the ground. The two also happen to be house cleaners for wealthy people. They realize that they were cleaning LeBron James’s house. Damon wants to throw a party at the house, and given LeBron’s connections, they want to invite a lot of people, including some celebrities.

I also have to add that Damon has had a crush on the singer Mya Harrison, or just Mya. Yes, as in “It’s All About Me” and “My Love is Like Whoa.” Because it comes into play at some point in the film.

So where do I stand with this film? Well, in my opinion, it had some promise at the beginning, but then things started to fall apart later on. Like I said before, I didn’t hate the fact that it was a remake. In fact, I did appreciate some of the callbacks to the old films. For example, when the WB logo was shown, it cut to the old New Line Cinema logo as kind of a tribute to the older films. I also saw that the gang members were the equivalent to the Full Force guys from the first two films. Not to mention one of them saying PeeWee’s catchphrase. Also, Kid ‘N Play had a cameo, but I might have to say that their cameo in the fifth film was better (it was probably one of the very few highlights of that film). I’ll get into more of that in a bit.

Another highlight was the soundtrack. I didn’t have a problem with the more modern tracks, but I was surprised at the old school tracks being played. It was a nice touch. I also chuckled at some of the scenes earlier in the movie. I even thought that as odd as Kid Cudi’s role was, it was kind of funny.

However, there were some issues with it. While I could see it was different from the others with the two leads being adults rather than teens, I am not sure how plausible it would be for a couple of grown men to throw a house party like that. It seems like something teens would do. But with it being in a mansion, I could let that slide. However, even with it being more than an hour and a half long, it felt slow in some areas because there was one scene with Kevin complaining about how the party was going and Damon’s behavior. That felt more like a scene that would happen towards the end, but when I looked at the clock, it was barely an hour into it. It wasn’t long until a certain plot point kicked involve the Illuminati.

Oh, do I have some things to say about that.

It was at that point where things started to go off the rails, especially with unexpected violence and battle scenes. I thought to myself, “What was I watching?”

Remember when I said that Kid ‘N Play had a cameo in this film? Well, it was very brief. Neither of them had any lines. It was unclear if this movie was set in the same continuity as the other films (well, except for the fourth film).

The bottom line is that this movie was not really that great, but if I were to any marathons/binges in the future, I wouldn’t be against watching it again. I could always exclude 4 and 5. As noted before, this reboot had some promise early on, and I didn’t mind some of the cameos. The callbacks didn’t feel forced, either. But for the most part, I would just watch 1-3. Hell, I would just do 1-3 with “Class Act” in there. But this one, I felt it was mostly “meh” at best.