It’s not easy to save the world while trapped in the body of a pigeon
Spies In Disguise PG ★★★★★
On paper, this animated children’s feature sounds a lot like The Incredibles, despite the fact that Will Smith is lending his voice to a super-spy rather than an out-and-out superhero. But then top agent Lance Sterling is turned into, er, a pigeon and we’re heading somewhere much sillier indeed.
Which will come as a relief to any accompanying parents perhaps alarmed by the amount of guns and comic-book violence that mark the first 15 minutes. Don’t worry, it doesn’t last; indeed, an antiviolence message gradually emerges and becomes part of what eventually turns out to be a surprising amount of fun.
Pivotal to this change in emphasis is Walter (left, with Sterling) – voiced by the ubiquitous Tom Holland – a young man who loves his gadgets, is committed to doing good but hates violence.
His idea of fighting back is inventing a gadget that projects sweet kitten videos just as the bad guys are about to pull the trigger.
But his experiments aren’t always successful, which is why Sterling now has to save the world while trapped in the body of a pigeon and accompanied not just by Walter, but a quickly assembled posse of pigeon-followers too – fat pidge, scruffy pidge and, of course, a rather lovely but surprisingly psychopathic, pretty pidge.
Smith is game and good in a film that has distant echoes of Men In Black (remember Frank the Pug?) and which definitely gets better as it gets ever sillier.
If this comic misfire is the answer to your Christmas entertainment problems, you have my sympathy.
Wrestler turned actor John Cena leads a cast laboriously mugging their way through a formulaic story of a team of macho firefighters who normally tackle forest fires.
When they rescue three children and can’t find their parents, they suddenly face a whole new range of challenges. Starting with changing a nappy, the first of rather too many lavatorial jokes, which signals the film’s remarkable lack of ambition.
There are brief moments of modest charm in a film that perhaps sets out to do for Cena’s career what Kindergarten Cop once did for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s but certainly doesn’t manage it. It’s also disappointing to see the talented Judy Greer reduced to playing a very obvious love interest.
One of those disappointing films where the end-credit out-takes are probably the best bit.