Sometimes, a follow-up to a given filmmaker’s previous work helps make sense of what came before. And with director Trish Sie’s last film, the glaringly disinterested Pitch Perfect 3, there was a prevailing feeling that Sie really wanted to step outside her comfort zone of music and dance choreography when it comes to feature films. Why else would a film about an a cappella group suddenly turn into a Spy-lite action flick? It’s with her latest that that switch-up feels like it was leading into something, and while this is still a bit rocky, I’d say it’s a switch-up worth taking.
It plays out like a more morally-dubious (yet still aggressively kid-friendly) spin on the Spy Kids formula, where a group of kids discover that one of their mothers (Malin Akerman) is a lot cooler than they realised, having left behind a life of high-class thievery to enter witness protection. That is, until she gets dragged back into her old life for one last job, with the screen-time split between her, her new husband (Ken Marino), and her former partner (Joe Manganiello) pulling off the heist, and Akerman’s children and their respective besties trying to find her.
And as weird as this feels to even put down on paper, of the two plots, the twee-comedy stuff is far better than the spy stuff. Don’t get me wrong, the stunts and fight choreography are pretty damn good, and it even gives Sie a chance to keep flexing her music video muscle (right down to a viral video being a recurring plot point), like with a grand throwdown backed by cello music. It’s just that, while mildly embarrassing at times, at least the kids didn’t make me continually scream “Stop talking!” at the screen like Dan friggin’ Marino does in every scene he’s in. I mean, this guy already got on my nerves in The Babysitter: Killer Queen, but he dials that same schtick all the way up here, and when he isn’t stopping the film dead every time he opens his mouth to do store-brand Ed Helms crap, he’s making the kid actors look like comedic geniuses by comparison.
But even with him standing in the way of engaging with this film on its own terms, at least I’m willing to do so this time around because this actually feels like Trish Sie and company are making a movie they want to make, rather than one they feel obliged to get over and done with. Maybe it’s because Sie isn’t being asked to cap off an existing franchise when everyone else has already tapped out, or maybe it’s because she found an avenue where she can show off what got her mainstream attention in the first place (music video filmmaking) while also spreading her wings ever-so-slightly, but I found this a lot easier to sit through than I was expecting. It still hurt in places, and Ken Marino has officially become an actor I need to be convinced is worth being in any film ever again, but for the Disney-Channel-in-all-but-name production it is, it’s fun enough to get the appeal of the thing.
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