These are the neighbors Brian Levant's new film could, and should have, become a real event for family cinema and receive the status of cult and universal love, like many of his previous works. Just imagine, because it was Levant who shot Beethoven, The Flintstones, Difficult Child 2, A Christmas Gift, but then lost his grip. Little remarkable "Snow Dogs", and now even some kind of pass "Spy next door." In addition, the plot itself has already predicted a good success for the film, replaying the wonderful "Bald Nanny", but here the miss was not impressive, and the worst is almost not funny.
Jackie Chan plays a poor neighbor who is loved by a young woman but hates his three children. Someone finds him too inappropriate couple, someone even considers him a cyborg, but he is actually a spy on a special mission, and, as expected by the genre, the best in his field. In general, these are neighbors, and how they reach mutual understanding is not entirely clear, but the purpose of the character Jackie is not only to differ every time for leadership, cleverly catching the villain, but also to find a common language with the children of his beloved, which is much more difficult than just saving the world from another madman.
Further, the plot could develop in two directions, provide us with either cool and hilarious adventures in the spirit of "Bald Nanny: Special Mission", or expose Jackie Chan as a kind of Inspector Clouseau, getting into the funniest situations and by the most ridiculous accident and luck, catching the most dangerous criminals. The authors decided not to do either. We are waiting for a rather boring story about the babysitter neighbor, about the fact that the Russians are always enemies of this world, and all this under the sauce of constant tricks and fights, looking surprisingly not so much exciting as fake. If in some places the film is able to surprise something, its main part makes you bored and not believe in what is happening.
The main problem with this movie is not funny. There are not many humorous scenes here, to name at least one of them really cool and hilariously funny language will not turn. Everything happens in a glimpse, and only one dialogue about the childhood of Chan’s character is capable of touching, and even then it boils down more to banality than to a really strong scene. Children do not go to watch the tricks of the militants, and will not tolerate falsehoods, and here it is difficult to believe in any of what is happening.
Despite the fact that the characters are written rather well, and the actors try to look sincere, it is impossible to either put the scene properly, nor to present the essence and author’s idea. Jackie Chan turned out to be a kind of spineless and monotonous, such a spy is not much interesting, because the soul is lacking in the whole film, and who but the charming Jackie Chan to drag out the situation and save the situation? Madeleine Carroll (White Queen from the third “Resident Evil”), quite spectacularly gives a closed teenager, but the most interesting storyline with her father is simply smeared and completely undisclosed, the character looks almost superfluous in everything that happens on the screen, despite the fact that the girl is really quite cute, but the script framework simply does not allow the actress to somehow reveal her talent, except for the demonstration of a collection of miniskirts and rare scenes of aggression on everything alive due to her complex nature.
Not as an example of the children’s and charming “Stone of desires”, typical children’s situations “Spy next door” look rather boring, sometimes unsaid and not disclosed in their possibilities to bring the story to a more detailed presentation and the most spectacular plot actions, and although all three kids screen time is given quite a bit, none of them were really given even a chance to show acting skills and talent, did not give themselves the opportunity to manifest themselves, and even the posters of the film in fact turned out to be a fake attraction, since the spy costume will try on only one of them, and when you are insanely sad and even in the finale. Instead of teaming up and working together, the film features cartoonish Russian villains and fairly standard plot moves along the road to Happy End. No, a happy ending is great and necessary, but if there is nothing to be happy about in the film, how many people will have the desire to watch until the end? If the movie’s best joke, “Don’t Feed the Pig Bacon!” isn’t just shown in the trailer, but also happens at the very beginning of the movie, will the target audience of a children’s/family movie still want to see it through to the final end? Children do not go to watch fake fights, and parents do not see much here that can unite and teach something touching.
Even some small humorous additions, in the form of a domestic pig or a comic pair of hooligans, do not save such a film, since they again do not get the opportunity for more visual demonstrativeness. There are practically no jokes with a piglet, and around cute animals you can always twist a lot and please the public, but the creators of the film regularly forget in what genre they shoot their films.
And it is in the loss of the genre that the main drawback lies. The film is essentially kind, it is positive and good, but so unsaid, closed and unopened that the plot rod looks very poorly framed by all the other details, which, although not bad in themselves, with interesting potential, but are not evenly located, hang in fragments and crooked, and in fact do not represent anything of themselves.
And to sum up here you can only one thing - the film, of course, is not bad, but very passable and not much remarkable. Showing in the prologue cut from various action films Jackie Chan, he is already in the middle of his plot, shows in contrasting comparison that we are not his best film. And some references to the film classics, in the spirit of the mention of the "Anglo-Klingon dictionary" simply do not work, and even to the classic superspy - Bond here references are not as witty as, say, in "The Tooth Fairy". “The Spy in the Neighborhood” came out quite dull, not very exciting, and of course, for the audience of Russia it is unlikely to be positively perceived the presentation of Russians as a world evil, besides the evil of stupid, ugly and even caricatured.
In family cinema, falsehood and playfulness are unacceptable, honesty, sincerity and sincerity are welcomed here, so that everything is fun, kind and looks breathtaking. What to do “Spy next door” clearly failed, but to watch the film fans of the genre, perhaps, still worth it. After all, even a passing average movie can somehow brighten up time and give at least a bit of kindness, because the film is still good and positive.
6 IZ 10
Original