Taylor Sona D. answered • 05/07/16
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I just got back from a free screening of this movie. I watched the trailer beforehand and I thought, "Wow, this looks like crap." But I went anyway, because it will probably be years, if ever, that I get a chance to see a movie before the general public does again. At first glance, it looks like a rip-off of the Vin Diesel movie, The Pacifier. While it does have some similarities, (a dude who kicks ass as some sort of government employee watching over a group of siblings while the mother is away, and the kids get in danger, and bad guys go raid the house), it actually isn't TOO similar. This is neither a good thing or a bad thing. Either way, unless you're 5, you've already seen this movie before.
The best part of Chan’s films back in the day was the closing credits with the outtakes. They always complimented the relatively serious film we had just seen and I always left the theater with a smile. The writers of The Spy Next Door definitely try to rekindle some of those feelings by opening the film with classic footage and shots from his earlier work and closing with the classic outtakes. Here’s the issue; those are the only remotely decent parts of the film. The rest is painful, unfunny, terribly acted and just downright awful. I normally do not grunt in a movie theater but this movie almost made me sick it was so bad.
I will say that this is definitely a kid's movie. Perhaps my review will be a bit too harsh for this movie, given the age group it's intended for, but the mark of a good kid's movie is the fact that adults can enjoy it as well. Maybe not as much as the kids will, but enjoyment nonetheless. Pixar is excellent at this. And even if it is a kid's movie, wouldn't you want your child to watch good, well-made movies? Don't you want your child to know what a real Russian accent sounds like, instead of the horribly overdone accents that were featured in The Spy Next Door?
The movie starts out with some shots of Jackie Chan doing some action stunts. It was very random, and it suddenly cut to him waking up. Then it cuts to another house, where kids are screaming at each other and the youngest child, Nora, played by an admittedly adorable Alina Foley, is chasing a pig around. The eldest child, played by Madeline Carroll, is screaming about something, possibly the fact that she was named Farren, while the middle child, Ian, played by Will Shadley, is arguing with Farren. He throws in the word "hypothesis" to show the audience that he's the smart one. Farren yells at the mother, Gillian (Amber Valletta), that her kids are weird. They scream some more, leave the room, and Gillian gets out of bed. With a huge smile on her face! It's almost creepy how smiley she is.
Oh, okay, it's because she's in love with Bob Ho (insert joke here), the next-door neighbor who works as a pen importer. They meet for dinner that night, and Ho wants to tell Gillian something, because it's their 3-month anniversary. But then his beeper goes off, and he rushes off to capture some evil Russians. The next time they see each other, Gillian and Bob discuss marriage. Wait, what? Marriage? But... but... they've been dating for three months. And he's a spy. And her kids hate him, because he's a geek! Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
Then Gillian's dad, who plays on some senior sports league, slid into third and now needs his hip replaced. She agrees to leave her kids with Bob. While Bob packs, the kids snoop around. Ian goes on his computer and downloads a top-secret file, because he's an idiot and thinks it's a concert. Then a whole lot of chaos happens, and bad Russian accents happen, and the kids are brats, and oh noooo, Farren's dad left Gillian, who's only her step-mom, and she doesn't fit in! Oh nooooo. Poor Farren. That TOTALLY makes up for her being a complete... runt... for almost the entire film. She just doesn't fit in! I think that's where the audience is supposed to like her more now. And a cute Russian spy tells Farren a knock-knock joke, which I couldn't even hear but apparently it was HILARIOUS. And then some more chaos happens, and George Lopez turns out to be a mole. Oh noooooooooooo. And Billy Ray Cyrus is in it. Oh nooooooooooooooo. =(
Some more chaos happens, and the bad guys seem to be winning, but of course they never do because it's a Jackie Chan movie and that just doesn't happen in Jackie Chan movies 'cause Jackie Chan is a total badass.
I won't spoil the ending for all you fine folks, but if you watch the first 15 minutes, you know what happens anyway. (Spoiler alert: Bob Ho's real name isn't Bob! OMG, I know! A spy with a fake name? Soo outlandish.)
Edit: I was reading some other reviews of this film, just for kicks, and I noticed 2 reviews defending the movie because, "not every movie is a Dark Knight". How is this a defense? Chastising people for giving a negative review for a movie because you assume that they were expecting something on par with a movie that the general public gets their pants wet over is quite immature. Of course we with the negative reviews were not expecting some masterpiece. The plot itself screams its inferiority at all who listen. But as countless of filmmakers have shown in the past, and will continue to show, it is possible to make a great, enjoyable movie without people walking out of the theatre going, "That was a masterpiece!" The Spy Next Door makes little to no attempt to even be a good movie. It's all recycled drivel, with nothing remotely original about it. And for anyone going, "If you didn't like it so much, why are you wasting your time nitpicking it?" Well, maybe it takes YOU a long time to type up a review but this is being done in about 2 minutes' time, during which I am multitasking by listening to a song and eating breakfast, as well as saving whales and giving Congress some helpful suggestions regarding health care and the climate change issue. I'm also playing Fur Elise on the violin while doing a wheelie, if it helps get across what little effort it takes to type a review.
