Spoilers for Playdate are ahead! If you’d like to stream this wild action movie, you can do so with an Amazon Prime subscription.
There’s a new action flick that premiered on the 2025 movie schedule called Playdate, and it has maybe the most WTF ending I’ve seen all year. Now, when I heard about Playdate, I thought this action comedy led by Kevin James and Alan Ritchson had the potential to show off the Reacher star’s comedic skills and tell a fun story. However, only one of those things happened…
While Ritchson genuinely was funny, this story was wild (and not in a good way). And that’s in great part because the end of this wild day that Kevin James’ character and his step-son spent with Alan Ritchson’s character and his presumed son took such an absolutely ridiculous turn that left me utterly baffled.
Clones? Why’d It Have To Be Clones?
OK, here we go, let me try to explain this…at the end of Playdate, which was panned by critics, it’s revealed that Jeff, Alan Ritchson’s character, was Colonel Kurtz’s (Hiro Kanagawa) “perfect soldier.” However, Jeff had too much empathy, and so they used technology to “create the perfect genetic soldier,” which, according to these villains, means someone who feels no emotion and can be a killing machine.
So, that brings us to the conclusion that they used Jeff’s DNA to make CJ (the child Jeff was looking after) and a bunch of other clones. Talk about a plot twist…
When Kurtz orders CJ to kill Jeff (yes, that happened; this child was asked to kill his father figure), Ritchson’s character was able to talk some sense into his clone. CJ then shot Alan Tudyk’s evil genius Maddox in the butt with a crossbow, and they fought their way out of the warehouse with the help of Kevin James’ Brian and his stepson, Lucas (Benjamin Pajak).
Now, at no point during this movie did I think the answer to the question about why CJ and Jeff were together was cloning. In fact, not in a million years did I think that’d be the case.
Child soldiers, super soldiers and clones were a bananas turn for this movie to take, so yeah, I was saying WTF over it.
Why Are We Saving One Of The Clones But Letting The Rest Of Them Explode?
Now, I get that the rest of the clones in this new streaming movie were, as Kevin James’ character put it, “psycho killing machines.” So, after they fought their way out of this evil situation, they killed them all by blowing up the building.
However, I’d like to posit the question: If CJ can be saved, why can’t the other kids…I mean clones?
The whole idea I think this movie is trying to get across is that while CJ was made to be evil, he was nurtured to be good, and he was worth saving. So, when you think about all of this from that angle, couldn’t all those other cloned child soldiers have been saved, too?
All around, there was a lot of weird violence that involved kids in this movie, and I know they’re not normal kids; they’re evil clones, but still…In the end, I think this move kind of contradicts the whole point of saving the kid who had been with Jeff for a long time. So, it’s an odd note to end on.
Why On Earth Did They Set Up A Sequel?
But guess what, the movie doesn’t end there. No, no, there’s a mid-credits scene that sets up another story.
Yeah, after some delightful bloopers and a dance number that featured the four lead actors in red track suits, Brian’s wife Emily (Sarah Chalke) shows up with a big bag of Tostitos chips and salsa and asks about the playdate. However, before Kevin James’ character can tell the story, CJ and Jeff knock on his door with sleeping bags in hand.
Then, after making Brian guess why they were there, Jeff says a bunch of new bad guys burned down his house…thereby setting up another adventure.
I don’t need that to happen, though. I’m fine, at best, with what we got here; it was enough WTF energy for me, and I’d just like all these characters to go back to their normal everyday lives while I go back to mine.