Review: Roofman – Playtime
Directed by Derek Cianfrance
Starring Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, Peter Dinklage
6/10
Who wouldn’t want to be stuck inside a Toys “R” Us with free rein to play around inside during the nighttime? Even if this was done because you were on the run for armed burglary, it’d still be the most enjoyable way to be homeless. On top of this, you even get to date Kirsten Dunst. This fantasy makes up the true-life tale that should be a lot more fun than it sounds.
Our titular roofman is Jeffrey (Channing Tatum), given that name as he’s a serial burglar, mostly of McDonald’s stores, who enters from the roof and (very politely) gets the workers to open the safe and hand over the cash. His crimes catch up to him, and he’s sent to prison, away from his young daughter.
He hatches a plan to escape and finds himself in a Toys “R” Us, finding an enclave near the BMX section where no-one ever looks. After disabling the CCTV recordings and setting up his own surveillance (using baby monitor cameras) to spy on the workers, such as the aggravating manager Mitch (Peter Dinklage) and the pushover teenage worker Otis (Emory Cohen), he makes a home of this large store that would be a dream house for any child (and most adults).
Channing Tatum has proven his comedy chops before (“my name is Jeff”), but it seems he either doesn’t possess any physical slapstick skills or the film is just refusing to allow him to demonstrate them. There should be so much more fun had with the simple concept of a man stuck in a huge toy store, left to his own devices (there’s plenty around to play with). Seeing any great slapstick actor in his place instead—Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati or Rowan Atkinson—would’ve brought much more comic sensibility to how this criminal acts in such a childish and consumerist play area, but Tatum (whether it’s his fault or the script’s) brings out very little humour in this regard.
But this non-comedy film soon becomes a romance film when he gets the hots for worker Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), a single mum of two teen daughters who does charitable work at a church, where Jeffrey goes to make such a generous donation of toys. Roofman spends more of its time on Leigh becoming smitten with Jeffrey (which is quick when you look like Channing Tatum) and the family life he inserts himself into, with this romance being elevated by the ticking clock of when his cover will be blown.
The marketing of Roofman suggests a comical take on a funny-sounding and harmless true crime story, but it ends up opting for a more mundane and subdued spirit instead, constantly getting distracted with secondary characters that it unsatisfyingly only goes halfway with. The romance works fairly well, mostly from how loveable Dunst’s character is, but there’s little in this overlong, malnourished flick that makes it exciting at all (except maybe the scene of Tatum in the nip).
DAVID MORGAN-BROWN