Last night I was told by one of my wife's best friend that some new movies are already available online. This was due to the covid-19 outbreak which made some movie producers and distributors decided to release their films digitally rather than the normal theatrical release. Anyway, I decided to watch this one which I had seen its trailer once or twice before. Well let us get on with it then.
Brief Story Line
JJ (Dave Bautista - Final Score, Hotel Artemis etc) was a former special forces soldier who now worked for CIA under the supervision of his boss David Kim (Ken Jeong - Wonder Park, Crazy Rich Asians etc). However he was terrible in doing spy work and was later given a new easy assignment of doing surveillance on a single mother Kate (Parisa Fitz Henley - Fantasy Island movie etc) and her 9 year old daughter Sophie (Chloe Coleman) who might be connected to their relative who happened to be a major terrorist.
Despite his reluctance, JJ had no choice but to do this assignment with a tech person Bobbi (Kristen Schaal - The Last Man on Earth TV series etc). Their supposedly easy task became complicated when Sophie somehow found out about JJ and Bobbi's work in their apartment building and "manipulated" JJ to become her friend.
So what would happen to all these people involved? You can find them all in this action comedy movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Dave Bautista had ben playing in various movies and I think he really left a good impression ever since he played as Drax in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy & subsequently Avengers movies. But his other works were pretty average and had low or moderate success. So when I saw this one I thought maybe he could get a better break, but then came covid-19 outbreak which made the movie released digitally instead and we would not know if it would have been a huge hit.
Anyway, when I saw the film, I felt it had few similarities with other comedy movies like Melissa McCarthy's Spy or Steve Carell's Get Smart but the one that I thought was really similar was Vin Diesel's The Pacifier. It was also a story where an agent was assigned to do some surveillance work only to end up being close to 5 children (as opposed to 1 child in this movie). But even though it might be having a lot of the same recipes, the film still managed to give me few laughs. There was even one time where I exclaimed a bit and shocked my wife (I was watching it using my earphone and she was too concentrated in her own thing that she did not know I would be giving that loud noise).
As an action comedy movie, this one was pretty OK. It had enough charm and the chemistry between Dave Bautista and newcomer Chloe Coleman was quite convincing. For such a young actress, she seemed to be able to match the more senior actors, however there was also once or twice that her character might be more annoying than cute. Another character that was fun to watch at first was Bobbi but not sure why as the story continued, her character did not seem to be likable enough at least for me. One actor that I was a bit disappointed was Ken Jeong, cause I imagined he would be providing some comical scenes but instead he played a tough & firm boss which I thought seemed out of place. If you are not going to ask him show off his humorous side, might as well use a different actor. There was also another familiar face for me Greg Bryk (Bitten TV series) in a quite important role.
The action part itself was so so. In fact I thought it was a bit too minimal. The climax was OK, a bit too much but still entertaining. Special effects were pretty average for Hollywood standard. It also had some surprising twist which I did not see coming. The duration was around 99 minutes including closing credits which did not have any mid or post end credit scene. There were some nice music as well during the whole film. I also think this movie is quite safe for younger audience but not for small kids even if the action was not too violent and no mature scenes (it was categorized for 13+ in Indonesia).
Overall this was a fun but not too hilarious action comedy movie. It might be just another film that use similar formulas with other movies of its genre. As long as there is no expectation of originality, fans of such type or Dave Bautista should be able to enjoy this one. I myself had a nice enough time watching it during my stay at home period, though if the action was done in a more spectacular fashion, I would have probably enjoyed it even more. So if you have the chance and was looking for some fun to release stress, this might be a nice option.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
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