Vacation Friends ★★

Clay Tarver

Starring Lil Rel Howery, Yvonne Orji, John Cena, Meredith Hagner, Robert Wisdom

When you go on holiday and meet those friends that help to engross you in the holiday experience, leaving your old life behind for a mere week, one set of those friends is always more keen to reconvene back home than the other. Here, Lil Rel Howery's Marcus and Yvonne Orji's Emily are less keen, as their Vacation Friends played by John Cena and Meredith Hagner do what they can to continue the fun and forget about the post-holiday blues.

Cena and Hagner have a unique chemistry here, having so much fun with the roles and truly utilising the comedy genre to the best of their ability; but Lil Rel is often dampening antics, as his straight-laced character comes across as whiny and irritating.

Every practical joke or moment of slight seriousness turns out to be a fake-out, making the punchlines fairly predictable fairly quickly, and although a gentle exhale in response to humour was given on a couple of occasions, it was only due to John Cena's excellent comic timing.

Amongst adultery, sedation and judgemental parents this story has few things to be proud of, but if nothing else it's yet another spotlight for John Cena to show off what kind of comedy actor he can really be.

Vacation Friends available now on Disney+