In 2008, when Dwayne Johnson’s star as an actor was
beginning its initial rise, Peter Segal’s take on the classic spy show Get
Smart gave The Artist Who Wants Us To Stop Calling Him The Rock a proper shot
at the mainstream, beyond his previous stardom as a wrestler. A little over a
decade later, Segal seems to be on a similar tear, stepping back into the
comedic spy game with Dave Bautista, the latest success story in that
WWE-to-the-big-screen transition and, between crowd-pleasers like his work as
Drax The Destroyer in the MCU and critical darlings like his opening role in
Blade Runner 2049, this should be a slam dunk. Unfortunately, this latest
attempt at carving out Bautista’s place in a more family-friendly lane is a major fizzler.
This is one of those disheartening situations where everyone
on-screen, from Bautista as the struggling soldier-turned-spy, to Kristen
Schaal as his CIA analyst partner, even Chloe Coleman’s impossibly precocious
child who brings herself into the larger espionage capering, are all quite good
in their roles. What makes it disheartening that it ends up being a lot of
talent put into the wrong places, making this whole thing feel like it’s
wasting everyone in attendance, which is compounded by how they all end up
tearing at different aspects of the production’s overall composition.
With Schaal, her frequently ad-libbed quips are a little too
good at pointing out the general lack-of-sense present in the script, poking
fun at it without giving any real inclination why we should care about what’s
happening anyway. With Coleman, as fun as it is watching her own every second
she gets as the preternaturally-talented spy-in-the-making, her on-screen
aptitude is so bound by the requirements of the plot at any given moment that
it ends up failing at the landing. Like, right when her natural skills would help her the most in-story, that's when they're conveniently sidelined. And with Bautista, it’s with how there are
previous and quite lucrative examples of former wrestlers translating their
in-the-ring charisma to the cinema, and yet he apparently thought the best way
of doing that translating was portraying one of the rock-stupidest ‘spies’ I
can recall seeing on film.
Admittedly, that’s part of the point, putting him in the
quite precious position of being shown up at his own job by a kid who hasn’t
even hit double-digits yet. However, given that position amounts to a lot of
emotional blackmail alongside recurring moments of actual blackmail at
the hands of Coleman’s Sophie, the end result is a bit of a drag. Okay, it’s a lot
of a drag, to the point where it feels at least twice as long than its
100-minute run time would suggest. Even ignoring my ‘liar revealed’ pet peeve
that forms the core of the narrative, it’s difficult to take any of this at
face value, or even as farce, when it feels like the writers are barely even
trying to make things compelling. Coming from the Hoeber brothers, best known
for their adaptations of Warren Ellis’ Red, I expected better.
And coming from the director of Get Smart, I most certainly
expected better from Peter Segal, who comes across here like he’s never even touched
action before. It ends up falling into the same trap that his previous effort Second Act did, in
that it feels messy and aimless because it can’t find a middle ground between
all the different things it’s trying to get across. Except here, there’s only two
things to focus on, the domestic comedy and the spy thrills, and yet there’s
still a lot of strain in balancing them.
At best, it only highlights Segal’s relative lack of
experience with the genre, with a final shootout that looks like something even
the editor of Taken 3 would laugh at. And at worst, it puts the audience in the
same surveillance role as the spy leads, only we’re being deliberately pushed
towards the least interesting things to look at at any given moment. Also, this
is a film about nuclear arms deals and the potential of an entire city getting
levelled, but with a PG rating… calling this ‘neutered’ is an understatement.
This is just a miserable sit. A showcasing for pretty decent
actors, and even some potential up-and-comers like with Chloe Coleman, but all
in service to a story that just fills up time rather than actually doing or
saying anything, and a director who needs to cut out the bloat and focus.
I don’t want to believe that the man behind two of Adam Sandler’s strongest
comedic ventures, not to mention fully selling me on Dwayne Johnson with Get
Smart, has reached this level of apathy, but he’s not exactly giving me reason
to think otherwise.
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