It's not often that Bryan Cranston and Megan Mullally are the comedic saviors of a movie, but that's 2016 for you. They rescue Why Him? from abject mediocrity as the parents of a college girl (Zoey Deutch) who's taken up with a dopey-grinned tech millionaire (James Franco, in his wheelhouse) with "no filter" (a screenwriting hack that lets a character say and do whatever you want him to). Spending Christmas at his tacky mansion, the parents are alarmed by the guy's erraticism, unsure of his trustworthiness. This setup (from I Love You, Man director John Hamburg) leads to stale farce scenarios like Confusingly High-Tech Japanese Toilet and Eavesdropping from Under a Desk, but Cranston and Mullally wring every ounce of humor they can from it, aided by Keegan-Michael Key as Franco's manservant. The laughs are scattershot, but the tone is good-natured, the humor un-cruel. by Eric D. Snider