Adventures in babysitting - The Spy Next Door' Review

Posted on January 25, 2010 - 12:50pm by michael The obligatory family movie is something that plagues most movie stars once they reach a certain level of superstardom, like those god-awful Christmas albums that musicians used to feel obliged to impose upon the world (I'm talking to you, Mariah). Sometimes good movies sneak through when tough guys try their luck with the kids, like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop or Joe Pesci in Home Alone, but in general the bad press tends to be pretty accurate. I always wonder why these action stars keep making movies like this (this month's The Tooth Fairy is Dwayne Johnson's third family film) since they are so rarely any good, but I guess someone must be enjoying them. Really little kids, is my guess. In The Spy Next Door, Jackie Chan, as you already guessed, plays a secret agent man. No points for guessing what song they play during the opening credits. So get this, Jackie Chan plays an impossibly geeky Chinese guy named Bob who lives in a cookie-cutter American suburb. He has been dating his neighbor Gillian for three months and, in keeping with the traditional American celebration of such a magnanimous anniversary, the talk about marriage begins. Only problem, her three kids hate him. He's a pen-importer, after all. What could be more boring? The pet cat, turtle, and pig are cool though. Oh yeah, other problem, he hasn't quite told her yet that he's a super-secret spy working for the CIA and the Chinese government (the movie's most outlandish idea, by far) in order to stop a lot of Russian caricatures from destroying all the world's oil supply except Russia's. [caption id="attachment_69287" align="alignleft" width="394" caption="Jackie Chan throws himself in harm's way before an altercation escalates into something really dangerous."][/caption] But enough about the inadvertent eco-terrorists. Their purpose is to scramble across the screen periodically with their outrageous accents and hilariously goofy outfits, and give Jackie Chan reasons to jump off shopping mall balconies and beat guys up with ladders and chairs and whatnot. Jackie Chan is 55 years old, by the way. I have no problem with the danger level of his stunts dropping down a couple notches. The outtakes at the end of the movie tend to be a little less interesting when most of them have to do with him butchering his English lines, but that's what you get when most of the stunts involve things like spinning bicycles and folding chairs. The kids are sure to love it, because the movie is about them, but I would guess that anyone who's reached middle school or so is going to find it intolerably boring. The movie actually had more fighting and stunts than I had expected, given Chan's age and the movie's target audience, but the inherent fun to be had in watching him beat up a lot of bad guys is hamstrung by an endless stream of boring, clichd jokes and badly dislikable characters. [caption id="attachment_69288" align="alignright" width="375" caption="Oh yeah, George Lopez is in it, too."][/caption] The kids have to hate Bob because he's not their dad, but director Brian Levant, who's been making crappy movies for nearly a quarter of a century, doesn't know when to stop having them broadcast their displeasure. We meet the oldest daughter, maybe 12 years old or so, at the beginning of the movie as she's trying on slutty outfits and then talking back when her mother keeps telling her to change. Throughout the movie she's viciously disrespectful of both her mother and Bob, which I guess is supposed to highlight the emotion in the intensely predictable ending, but will probably make you just wish her mother would give her a good smack. The 10-ish son is saddled with a lot of ham-handed comic relief (one scene requires him to ask some passing preteen, "If I told you you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?" This is meant to be funny), and the 5-year-old daughter is there for the cuteness factor and so she can perform a disappearing act at the shopping mall and make Bob jump off the balcony and swing across the mall on a big banner. Jogging down the escalator simply wouldn't do for such a task. But even though the movie is definitely pretty bad, there are times when movies like this can be fun, even for older audiences. Kids are almost sure to love it and older moviegoers are almost sure to hate it, but it's still possible to bring some of your buddies over when it comes out on DVD and have a few laughs. Billy Ray Cyrus appears in the movie, for example, with the tiny goatee and that hair, and utters the line, "Spying's easy. Parenting's hard." You won't be laughing with the movie, but you'll definitely be laughing, and there's always something to be said for that. The Bean Meter