"Let's cockblock these motherfuckers."
— Lisa
Blockers is a 2018 Sex Comedy by Kay Cannon in her directorial debut. It stars Leslie Mann (Lisa Decker), John Cena (Mitchell Mannes), and Ike Barinholtz (Hunter Lockwood) as the three main parents and Kathryn Newton (Julie), Geraldine Viswanathan (Kayla), and Gideon Adlon (Sam) as the girls.
Julie, Kayla and Sam are a trio of 18-year-olds who have been friends since elementary school. On the day of their prom Julie announces to the others that she intends to lose her virginity to her boyfriend Austin (Graham Phillips) that night. The three of them agree to a sex pact - that all three will have sex with their prom dates. However on the night their respective parents Lisa, Mitchell and Hunter find an emoji-riddled discussion of the pact on Julie's open laptop and agree to stop the girls before it's too late. So begins a night of wacky misadventures that will change how all six view themselves and each other.
Blockers contains examples of:
- Above the Influence: Kayla seeks to avert this by informing Conner before she starts drinking that she wants to sleep with him at the end of the night.
- Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: All of Connor's "recipes" toe the line between this trope and Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick, but best exemplified by his "Wavy Davy" Macarons.
— Connor "The Chef" Aldrich: So it's DMT that I get from the dark web, then there's a little tiny bit of Xanax to just kinda take the edge off, it's pretty tight. And then I bake it into a white chocolate macaron, and it has like a raspberry filling that's both light and fluffy but also very flavorful and satisfying.
- Ass Shove: To gain entrance into a house their children are currently in, the parents (specifically Mitchell) are challenged to do Butt Chugging, which is exactly what it sounds like.
- Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: Mitchell openly distrusts Connor, Kayla's date to the prom, and when he thinks they are about to have sex or have had sex he throws Connor through a wall.
- Childhood Friends: Julie, Kayla and Sam have known each other since the first day of elementary school. Their friendship also brought together Lisa, Mitchell and Hunter, though it takes the events of the film to make the latter three true friends.
- Coming of Age Story: All three girls grow as people throughout the film.
- Coming-Out Story: It is established early on that Sam has feelings for another girl in the school, and has been struggling with those feelings, fearing that her friends will reject her. By the end of the film she has come to terms with her sexuality and is able to come out to the other girls who accept her unconditionally.
- Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Downplayed. When Hunter admits that part of the reason he cheated on Sam's mother is because she was physically abusive in public, Mitchell and Lisa are sympathetic, though afterwards are revealed to have not been paying attention and the situation is treated as a joke. However, Hunter's abuse itself is treated as VERY wrong.
- Empty Nest: Lisa's life for the past 18 years has been focused on raising Julie, so she has no idea what she will do with her life once Julie leaves for college, and tries to convince her to go to the closest one possible.
- Erudite Stoner: Conner is somewhere between this and a Nice Guy. He provides Kayla with drugs and alcohol at her request, but only as much as she'd enjoy without losing her wits. He also had no intention of sleeping with Kayla until Kayla expressed her interest in sleeping with him. And when Kayla changes her mind at the last minute, Conner immediately accepts and suggests they spend their time mindfully journalling together instead.
- Follow in My Footsteps: Inverted with Lisa. She worries that Julie will accidentally get pregnant, like she did, and not get to live the life she wants.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: While Mitchell and Lisa are not particularly close at the start of the movie, they both detest Hunter. By the end of the movie, they all become true friends.
- Funny Background Event: While Julie and Austin are staring into each other's eyes, Lisa tucks and rolls out of their sight to escape their hotel room.
- Gayngst: Sam suffers from this as she is a closeted lesbian and hides it from her friends and family out of shame and fear of being rejected. It's because of this she goes along with her plans to have sex with a boy on prom night. Luckily, her dad and friends accept her instantly after she comes out.
- Held Gaze: Julie views this as a key part to how she wants her first time with Austin to go.Julie: I'm gonna look into Austin's eyes, and then he's gonna look into mine. And then, we're gonna, like, touch each other's faces, y'know, for like, a long time. A long time. Just, like, connect. And then, we're gonna....ka-pow.
- Here We Go Again!: Played for Laughs. The film looks like it's going to end this way, with Hunter, Lisa, and Mitchell catching another text conversation between the girls, where they announce their plan to do a bunch of reckless stuff. But it turns out the three girls were just pulling a prank."Just kidding. We ❤ you guys!"
- Lousy Lovers Are Losers: Played With. Sam's prom night date climaxes before he can even get inside of her and promptly falls asleep without a care for her, but Sam is actually relieved since she's a closeted lesbian who was trying to lose her virginity to a guy only because her two other girl friends were planning to do the same.
- Made of Explodium: Lisa’s car explodes after getting into a wreck. For no apparent reason.
- Male Frontal Nudity: Mitchell unwillingly gets to Ron completely naked while he's playing a sex game with Cathy, including a close up of his balls.
- Manly Tears:
- One of Mitchell's defining character traits.
- Hunter cries after Sam comes out to him.
- Meaningful Name:
- Done subtly, as the writers gave almost every named character an age-appropriate first name, with the exception of Julie, whose name was more common for babies born in her parents' generation, and Hunter, who is the opposite, as his name was only 669th most popular among boys born in 1977 (his, and actor Ike Barinholtz's birth year), but 35th most popular in 2000, when most 2018 high school graduates were born. Compared to her friends, Julie is arguably the most mature and the most ready to have sex, while Hunter is a Manchild who often acts as if he's still in high school.
- Sam could also be an example, due to her Gender-Blender Name and the fact that she is a lesbian.
- A Minor Kidroduction: The movie's prologue is a home video montage of Julie, Kayla and Sam as little kids.
- Misaimed Fandom: Julie describes American Beauty as a Romantic Comedy, decorating their bed with flower petals in homage to a famous shot from that film. Austin asks if she had seen it all the way through.
- A Mistake Is Born: Lisa accidentally implies to her daughter Julie that she was a "life-changing mistake" during a heated argument.
- No Antagonist: One of the themes of the movie is that the parents bring a lot of their suffering on themselves through their unresolved emotional issues. The closest we get is Sam's mother, who Hunter says was physically abusive and an adulterer. However, she barely factors into the plot and is otherwise depicted as a kind person.note
- One of the Kids: Hunter tries to be this. Unfortunately for him, his Manchild tendencies are one of the biggest reasons he's disliked nearly universally.
- Only Sane Man: Hunter is depicted as this compared to Mitchell and Lisa, in regards to his view on the daughters planning to lose their virginity. In an uncommon example, he's also portrayed as the dumbest of this three, causing Mitchell and Lisa to ignore him.
- Open-Minded Parent:
- Hunter realized that Sam was gay years before she realized it herself, and is completely OK with it, to the extent that he joins the other parents in attempting to stop the sex pact, not because he's opposed to the idea of Sam having sex per se, but rather because he thinks Sam is going to have sex with a boy just to fit in with the others.
- Kayla's mother Marcie isn't bothered by the idea of her daughter having sex, trusting Kayla to know when she's ready. She also points out that the other parents probably would have reacted very differently if the girls had been boys.
- Lisa, by the end of the film. Seeing how much Julie and Austin love each other, and that Julie is in full control of the situation and doesn't feel pressured in any way, she lets them have their night together.
- Austin's parents, Ron and Cathy. Not only do they love playing kinky sex games despite being presumably at least a decade older than the main grown-up characters, they are so open-minded that they seem cool with Austin texting them a blow-by-blow account of his and Julie's plan to lose their virginity.
- Papa Wolf:
- Though a sensitive Gentle Giant, Mitchell is very protective of Kayla, and goes through all sorts of trials during the film to find her.
- Hunter also counts as one, as he threatens to beat up Chad if he ever made Sam do something she didn't want to.
- Parental Hypocrisy: One of the girls protested to her father that he had sex himself with her mother to conceive her and that he has no right to take away her own sexual freedom.
- Primal Scene: In the stinger, Kayla comes home and walks in on her parents playing the same sex game they saw Ron do with Cathy (which means Mitchell's nude). She screams in horror (they weren't actually having sex yet, but it's obviously bad enough in her mind).
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Marcie, Mitchell's wife and Kayla's mother, berates the other parents for not trusting their daughters to make their own decisions, and points out the double standard of their actions compared to if their girls were boys.
- Sex as Rite-of-Passage: This the drive behind the film, though the girls all have their own reasons for wanting to lose their virginity on Prom Night:
- Julie feels she has reached a stage in her relationship with boyfriend Austin where it feels natural for them to have sex. In the end, Julie is the only girl to actually have sex.
- Kayla just wants to get it out of the way before going to college
- Sam only joins the pact so that she will have a shared experience with the other two, as she fears losing touch with them during college.
- Shout-Out:
- Hunter mentions Inferno repeatedly.
- Julie tries to set the mood with rose petals as in American Beauty but based on her description of it as a “romantic comedy”, it’s implied she hasn’t seen how that movie turns out.
- Hunter asks “What would Vin Diesel do?” when driving after the girls’ limo; when he asks Julie if she's seen them, Julie mentions in turn that she's seen "the Tokyo one and the one where the Rock punches the torpedo", which Hunter considers the best two.
- When Mitchell and Hunter are sneaking through Austin’s house while his parents are having a blindfold sex game, Ron walking in causes a nearby cup of water to vibrate slightly.
- Sympathetic Adulterer: Hunter is reviled throughout the film for having cheated on Sam's mother, leading to their divorce, but eventually he angrily explains that their marriage had fallen apart long beforehand, Brenda had already cheated on him, and had started being physically abusive to him in public. His only regret is that he let the separation and divorce keep him away from being a father to Sam.
- Tears of Joy: Hunter cries these after Sam's coming out. Not just because he supports her but also because his daughter came out to him first instead of his cheating wife/her mom.
- Technical Virgin: Chad, Sam and Kayla both qualify by the end of the film. Sam and Chad got mostly naked in bed together, but on touching Chad's penis, Sam realizes she just doesn't enjoy the experience and is definitely a lesbian. Chad gets a little too excited from the experience... Kayla realizes that she wants her first time to be a little bit special after all, albeit not necessarily "perfect". Instead, she gets Connor to go down on her.
- The Teetotaler: Mitchell tries to outwardly appear this way, but ultimately acquiesces when Lisa and Hunter invite him for an (alcoholic) drink toward the end of the film. And let's not forget the butt-chugging.
- This Is Reality: While chasing the teens in an SUV, Lisa muses "What would Vin Diesel do?" and throws the car into a sharp turn. Cut to the van lying in a ditch as the parents muse on how The Fast and the Furious is "totally unrealistic."
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Kayla was brought up as a tomboy, though she oftentimes chafes at how she was raised as a clean-living, star athlete with tomboyish dress and mannerisms. Which is why she acts out by experimenting with cigarettes, eagerly talking about getting drunk and high, sampling Connor's drug-laced concoctions, and initially acting sexually aggressive toward him... until she realizes she's not yet ready for sex with him after all. Meanwhile, her friends Julie and Sam are very feminine.
- Transparent Closet: Sam is a lesbian and struggles to come to terms with it. When she finally comes out to her dad Hunter, he already knew and is okay with it.
- Turn Out Like Her Mother: The reason why Lisa is so overprotective of Julie and so concerned about her wanting to lose her virginity. As a Former Teen Rebel who was once dating someone who went on tour with the Dave Matthews Band, Lisa dropped out of college after becoming pregnant with Julie, and consequently missed out on a lot of her dreams as a younger woman.
- Twofer Token Minority: Angelica, Sam's crush, is a lesbian of East Asian descent.
- Visual Pun: The poster has the silhouette of a rooster on it... as in "Cockblockers".
- Vomit Chain Reaction: After Sam has had too much to drink, she pukes on Chad, which leads to Chad, Kayla, Austin, and even their limo chauffeur vomiting as well.
