Image via Amazon MGM Studios
Published Mar 4, 2026, 11:03 PM EST
Sam Barsanti has written about pop-culture for 10 years, and his work has appeared at The A.V. Club, Primetimer, IGN, and Collider. He has also contributed to the popular daily Hustle newsletter, which covers tech and startup news.
He'll happily talk to anyone about comic book movies (he thinks the MCU peaked with Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and giant robots (he thinks some of the Transformers movies are good), and he canonically exists in The CW's "Arrowverse" series of superhero shows.
Sam is also a published poet and horror writer, and his fiction work has appeared on The No Sleep Podcast.
For a guy who just seemed to hit his breakout role recently, Alan Ritchson has actually been quietly kicking around in film and television for decades. You may not remember that the human-shaped semi-truck (that’s a compliment) we all know and love today was once Raphael in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or the — ahem — small guy from New Girl. In fact, if you don’t count his pre-fame appearance serenading Paula Abdul on American Idol, Ritchson actually got his start working primarily as a comedy actor.
And while he’s best known these days for playing Jack Reacher on Amazon’s hit adaptation of Lee Child’s Reacher novels (previously adapted into two unpopular Tom Cruise movies), Ritchson’s best role in years actually came in a surprising place: The 2025 Prime Video action comedy Playdate. While not a huge hit with critics, the movie was a streaming success, and it was a better expression of Ritchson’s talents and experience with comedy than any of his other recent projects.
What is Alan Ritchson’s ‘Playdate’ About?
Image via Amazon MGM StudiosIt’s almost underselling it to say that Playdate has a ridiculous premise, but it is definitely ridiculous. It seems straightforward on paper, at least: Kevin James plays a stay-at-home stepfather trying to connect with his wife’s son, who (god forbid) isn’t very good at sports. He soon meets Ritchson’s character, Jeff, another stay-at-home dad who is built like a human-shaped semi-truck and has a son of his own who is super good at roughhousing and playing sports but seems emotionally detached.
They set up a playdate for the two kids at a Chuck E. Cheese-type attraction, but while there, they get spotted by armed bad guys who attack and try to capture Jeff’s son, CJ. In the middle of wacky car chases and other action sequences, Jeff reveals that he’s an ex-special forces soldier who is on the run for breaking CJ out of a secret government facility. It’s the same sort of setup that every action comedy has, where an action guy teams up with a flabbergasted regular guy (like Collateral if it had more jokes), but the saving grace is that Ritchson commits not just to being an action guy but to being the sort of weirdo who would get involved in a situation like this.
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He’d probably read like a sociopath in a more normal movie, singing in the car with two kids in the backseat while being attacked by mercenaries, but the same could be said for a lot of people in a lot of comedies. The cast is also padded out with some other heavy-hitters from comedies, with Sarah Chalke (Scrubs and Rick and Morty) playing James’ wife and Stephen Root (Barry and King of the Hill) as Ritchson’s dad. Paul Walter Hauser even shows up, playing a character named Galifinakish, which seems like a weird casting joke that didn't pay off.
So, while everyone likes Ritchson as Reacher and a lot of people want to see him put on the cape and cowl for a future Batman movie, it would be a waste to not let him stretch his legs in some more (better) comedies.
Release Date November 12, 2025
Director Luke Greenfield
English (US) ·