REVIEW Take flight from Spies in Disguise
Feather-brained Spies in Disguise wants to have its cake and throw it up, too
Ten years ago, an animator by the name of Lucas Martell made a short film called Pigeon: Impossible, in which a government agent’s weaponized briefcase is hijacked by an urban rock dove with a love of doughnuts. It’s clever, inventive, and six minutes long.
Spies in Disguise, from Blue Sky Studios (i.e., Fox, i.e., Disney), takes that germ of an idea and blows it up to an hour and 41 minutes without doing much to increase the smarts or resourcefulness of the original; it’s a bird’s brain in an elephant’s body. The result is a bit of a slog, though if you want a film that pits one Will Smith against another but is family-friendlier than the recent Gemini Man, this is your movie.
Smith provides the voice of Lance Sterling, a secret agent who works alone, gets the job done, and isn’t afraid to get his hands dirty.
But after the theft of a super-weapon by a villain who can make himself look like Lance’s clone (voiced by Ben Mendelsohn), the agency thinks Lance himself has gone rogue.
In fact, he’s gone bird. Agency scientist Walter Beckett (Tom Holland), has created a serum that turns Lance into a pigeon, albeit with the brains, the voice and the crime-fighting drive of the man. Lance now must reluctantly team up with Walter, who can do helpful things like open windows before Lance crashes into them.
It’s an off-the-wall, into-theglass concept, and co-directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane don’t quite seem to know what to do with it. They have way more fun than anyone should when Lance discovers that he now has a cloaca; let’s just say it takes poop humour to a whole new (lower) level.
And while pigeon-lance can’t master the art of flight, he’s incapable of passing gunk on the ground without trying to eat it. Meanwhile, Walter also has a pet pigeon that soon attracts a couple of wild comrades; together they scarf down anything the plot demands, and regurgitate it at the appropriate moment. It’s as though the movie wants to have its cake and throw it up, too.
Running beneath all the toilet humour is a message of anti-violence.
As an early scene of Walter as a child shows, the inventor has always been keen on developing the least lethal weapons possible — one of his brainstorms is a device that incapacitates people by overwhelming them with images of cute cats.
Mendelsohn’s character, on the other hand, it motivated by the fact that Lance once wiped out a cadre of his confederates — which, you may recall, is the same reasons the Albanians had it in for Liam Neeson in Taken 2. Spies in Disguise is far less problematic for youngsters, but be prepared to answer questions about where pigeon poo comes from.
Meanwhile, Martell has gone on to make The Oceanmaker, an atmospheric steampunk affair in which a plucky pilot battles sky pirates in an attempt to bring seas back to a desert world.
It’s 10 minutes long, available on Youtube and great fun. I just hope if it becomes a major motion picture, it doesn’t get watered down.