If you’ve ever purchased a ticket to a Jackie Chan movie, or popped one in your DVD player, you know exactly what you are going to get. Bare bones, predictable story, slapstick humor and eye-popping physical humor used throughout the environment.
With “The Spy Next Door,” that’s exactly what audiences get once again, just with a little less action and a little more family morals. And actually, that makes it kind of enjoyable.
Chan stars at Bob Ho, a seemingly simple pen salesman who is actually a Chinese super spy on loan to the CIA. He lives next door to Gillian, a beautiful single mom played by Amber Valletta. The two are romantically involved except that Gillian’s three kids hate Bob because he is boring. We all see where this is going, don’t we? He ends up having to watch them, they try and mess with him and then they are all eventually thrown into a huge spy game. Both Billy Ray Cyrus and George Lopez also have small roles.
Like we said up top, you know what you are getting with a Jackie Chan movie so it’s hard to fault the film for being as predictable as it is. What makes “The Spy Next Door” watchable, though, is the three kids played by Madeline Carroll, Will Shadley and Alina Foley. Each does a great job playing their role as foil to Chan, and also appealing to kids by either being a loner, a nerd or a free spirit each at different times. Anyone can relate to these kids and their niche performances.
What suffers because of that is the action. In the film someone says, “Spying is easy, parenting is hard” and that sort of goes along with the movie. The “spying,” aka action, is very toned down, mostly due to the PG rating while most of the entertaining bits are with the “parenting” that play up human interaction.
“The Spy Next Door” is a text book family film. Some martial arts for the boys, some lovey dovey stuff for the girls, some pretty girls for the dads and family values for the moms. The film hits on all family cylinders and though much of the humor falls flat on its face, it’s not without some charm. For that, we commend it. It won’t break any box office records or inspire 100 multiple viewings, but no one in your family will be disappointed that they saw it.
“The Spy Next Door” is in theaters now. To win free tickets check out our giveaway HERE.
Comments
Peter
January 15th, 2010 - 9:28:53 AM
Thanks for the review. We may consider this. The only other concern I have is potty humor. Too many kids movies just have a really high amount of that these days and it would be nice to see a movie without too much of that in it as well. I generally appreciate Jackie Chan's style because he's a great entertainer.
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Germain Lussier
January 15th, 2010 - 9:32:35 AM
I honestly can't remember any potty humor in the movie. I'm sure there is some but it didn't stand out. To be honest though, most of the humor didn't stand out.
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