Movie Review: “The Spy Next Door”
Franck Tabouring
Seen on: January 9, 2010
The players: Director: Brian Levant, Writers: Jonathan Bernstein, James Greer, Gregory Poirier, Cast: Jackie Chan, Amber Valletta, Alina Foley, George Lopez, Billy Ray Cyrus
Facts of interest: Brian Levant also directed "Are We There Yet?"
The plot: A former CIA spy has to babysit his girlfriend's kids and protect them from a bunch of weird terrorists at the same time.
Our thoughts: Brian Levant’s “The Spy Next Door” is a terrible film. It’s as dry as a family comedy can get, and it suffers mainly from a chaotic plot, monotonous story and a handful of poor acting performances. Children of a certain age may appreciate Jackie Chan jumping around the screen for 90 minutes, but I stopped caring after the first five minutes.
In fact, I’m not sure I even started caring about anything in this flick in the first place. Like many films in this genre these days, “The Spy Next Door” lacks heart and detail, which usually makes it impossible for me to give a damn about what I’m watching. It is no surprise then that the film’s biggest flaw is it’s poorly written, absurd storyline.
Jackie Chan stars as Bob Ho, a skilled undercover spy who decides to quit his dangerous job at the CIA to focus on his romantic relationship with his next-door neighbor Gillian (Amber Valletta), a single mother whose three kids just can’t stand the thought of their mom dating a geek.
Bob may be an expert at catching the world’s most ruthless terrorists, but when it comes to babysitting his girlfriend’s rebellious kids, he’s as helpless as a bird with broken wings. Things even get worse when one of the children gets a hold of a secret formula that quickly attracts the attention of Russian bad guy trying to take over the world.
I often see major parts of a movie play back in my head when I write my reviews, but let me tell you, the images flying around in my memory right now sure aren’t pretty. Plagued by an incredibly stupid story and a total lack of decent humor, “The Spy Next Door” is a dramatic failure from start to finish.
This is certainly not the first movie that follows a character struggling to watch a group of hyperactive kids, but it is undoubtedly among the most repetitive and uninspiring ones I’ve seen in a long time. The mess gets even worse when the incompetent bad guys show up and start trashing the place and kidnapping everybody they can lay a hand on.
Anyway, before you know it, the kids are in danger and Bob heads out to rescue them, and a couple of bad jokes and a series of goofy fighting sequences later, the world is save from the Russians and the children finally respect their babysitter. Believe it or not, but sometimes it takes a group of stupid killers with ridiculous accents to make kids love their guardians.
Chan’s battle scenes are occasionally fun to watch, and even though they get old pretty fast, they at least supply the plot with a few moments of decent action. Everything else is just painful to watch, and I cannot help but blame both the lame writing and at times catastrophic acting for all the film’s sucky parts (and there are lots of those).
Chan delivers some good moves but fails to be funny whenever he’s not kicking someone’s butt, even though he tries hard enough. Amber Valletta is totally miscast, and so is Billy Ray Cyrus, who just doesn’t belong on the big screen. George Lopez disappoints in the role of Bob’s boss, and the kid actors are often more annoying than hilarious.
Freaky quote: "Bring it on!" - Jackie Chan
The final word: I understand this movie targets kids who may love this stuff and think it’s all incredibly funny, but that just doesn’t automatically make “The Spy Next Door” a good film. It’s sad to see Jackie Chan taking on a project like this, but who knows… maybe he needs some cash. Then again, I hope this mess won’t earn too much money. It simply doesn’t deserve it.
Article by Franck Tabouring
Reader Comments (1)
Aww man give this movie some credit. Its suppose to be a Disney-like comedy movie for the family. But I know what you mean, we expected a jackie chan movie... hate to admit it but hes getting old :(