Netflix And Chill: Back In Action (2025)

A Netflix action comedy that stars Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz, the latter coaxed back out of retirement for it, Back In Action is the kind of glossy entertainment that seems designed to upset cinephiles while entertaining many who just want an easy option to start watching on a Saturday night. While it is silly, and very slick, it's also quite a bit better than the trailer would have you think, thanks to some fun casting and enjoyable running gags.

Foxx and Diaz play Matt and Emily, a couple of talented spies who end up in a relationship. Their latest mission goes spectacularly awry just after Emily tells Matt that she is pregnant. They decide to get out of the spying game, knowing that both could be assumed dead anyway, and start over for the sake of a calm and normal family life. Fifteen years later, that seems to be happening. They have two children, Alice (McKenna Roberts) and Leo (Rylan Jackson), and no worries, aside from how their kids view them. Alice is in a bit of a rebellious teen phase. Leo enjoys his videogames and just embracing his nerdiness. Then there's an incident, and Matt and Emily end up being shown around the internet, which brings trouble to their doorstep. 

There are certain things that you can expect from this type of fare nowadays. It's very easy to spot who the villain is. There will always be someone shown in a bad light who has something in their history that puts a different spin on things. At least one big stunt sequence will make use of technology that can make it seem as if our main stars are actually in the thick of the action (I miss the days when you could point out the huge differences between actors and the stunt performers who would take over for the more dangerous moments). Oh, and everything set up in the opening sequence will be brought back into the plot for the third act.

Considering that standard checklist, Seth Gordon and Brendan O'Brien do a decent job on this screenplay. Gordon is also the director, another role he handles well, and this is a huge step up from his last feature, Baywatch (not counting the TV movie he did back in 2018, Dan The Weatherman). It's often generally amusing, if rarely outright hilarious, and the action beats are surprisingly well-done and satisfying, if a bit prone to repeating one particular tag-team move that the main characters enjoy utilising.

Foxx and Diaz have a great rapport together, and they feel equally suited to the spy action as they do to the moments of being fretting parents. They're so good together that it almost makes you forget the fact that, once again, they can never share an onscreen kiss (because this is mainstream movie entertainment, and the USA would still be shocked to see a loving relationship that has a black man and a white woman kissing one another - sad, but true). Roberts and Jackson both do well as the children who end up majorly surprised by the skills of their parents, although the latter has a ridiculous sub-plot that makes no sense, unfairly positions him as being superior to his sister in one important way, and ultimately goes nowhere. Kyle Chandler is someone I enjoy seeing in movies, and he's fine here as the "handler" named Chuck, Andrew Scott is a British agent who is in pursuit of our leads, but also has a bit of an obsession with Diaz's character, and there are a few scenes stolen by Glenn Close and Jamie Demetriou. I'm going to mention Demetriou again because he's the person who provides most of the biggest laughs in the movie.

There are some decent tunes throughout the soundtrack, as well as a suitable score from Christopher Lennertz, and the mix of action and humour remains consistently distracting enough to help you avoid picking at any plot holes, including a huge misunderstanding of just what the Thames Barrier is used for. I had a lot of fun with this while it was on. I'm unlikely to ever rewatch it, but at least it meets that bar set for undemanding Saturday night entertainment featuring stars being stars.

7/10

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Ani-MAY-tion: Sherlock Gnomes (2018)

I am going to start this review with a confession that probably won't shock many of you. I quite enjoyed Gnomeo & Juliet. I know, I know, the bright visuals, the puns, the Shakespeare references, the puns, the voice cast, the Elton John songs, and the puns. It was a strange mix that worked for me. So when they decided to bring out a sequel, utilising the influence of Sherlock Holmes, I figured that it would probably amuse and entertain me. That was not the case.

The plot is, at the heart of it, very simple. A load of gnomes are going missing throughout London, leaving the mystery to be solved by Sherlock Gnomes (Johnny Depp) and Watson (Chiwetel Ejiofor). This coincides with some tension between Gnomeo (James McAvoy) and Juliet (Emily Blunt) as the pair settle in to their new London home, alongside the other garden residents. When Gnomeo is also snatched away, Juliet has to team up with Sherlock, who is insufferably dismissive of those who help him. This crime must be the work of Moriarty (Jamie Demetriou), surely, despite the fact that he seemed to be squished/smashed in the opening sequence.

Sherlock Gnomes is bright and colourful, just like its predecessor, and it has some Elton John tunes here and there. That's where the similarity ends. The merging of the various elements just doesn't work well at all, leaving a bit of a mess that will satisfy none but the youngest viewers, who can at least be kept entertained by the main characters.

Director John Stevenson fails to wrestle the script, by Ben Zazove, into anything close to a decent adventure. The few set-pieces fail to impress, the humour falls flat, and, perhaps worst of all, the character of Sherlock is made into something almost unrecognisable. Okay, he LOOKS familiar, but that is it. I MIGHT have missed some references, but this also felt very lazy in the plotting and script, missing out on any opportunity to reference the great selection of cases that Sherlock Holmes fans would be aware of. It smacks of something put together without any enthusiasm or care.

Depp isn't actually bad in his voice role, although I am sure Holmes purists will balk at the very idea, and Ejiofor is equally good alongside him (although his Watson is even further removed from the character that we know and love, all for the sake of a lazy and obvious plot turn in the third act). Demetriou is fine as a non-menacing Moriarty, but you do get a couple of decent villains in the shape of a pair of gargoyles (voiced by Dexter Fletcher and Javone Prince) and Mary J. Blige as a female character named Irene. Blunt and McAvoy are good, once again, in the lead roles, and the supporting cast includes Ashley Jensen, Matt Lucas, Stephen Merchant, and Ozzy Osbourne.

And I almost forgot to mention the Elton John songs, but that's because the film feels as if it almost forgot to include any. You get snippets here and there, and musical motifs interspersed throughout the score, but this is done in a way that is much more jarring than it was in the first gnome-filled tale. That had two main focal points, the Shakespeare-inspired love story and the songs. This has the tale of two garden-dwelling lovers, the central mystery to be solved by Sherlock, and the songs. That may not seem like too many plates to spin but it's obviously one too many, leading to all three becoming more and more wobbly until they fall and smash on the ground.

While it didn't actually pain me to watch it, Sherlock Gnomes was a massive disappointment. And it could have easily been on a par with the first film, if anyone had cared about what they were making.

4/10

You can buy the movie here.
Americans can buy it here.

Game Over, Man! (2018)

Oh boy. There's a fun idea at the heart of Game Over, Man! but it's one that is constantly being buried under a mountain of atrociousness.

Adam Devine, Anders Holm, and Blake Anderson star as Alexxx, Darren, and Joel, three male workers in the housekeeping department of some big hotel building. They're terrible at their job, and not in an amusing way. They're just so bad that you have to wonder how they have stayed in employment for more than half a day. Always looking for the chance to sell one of their big (and terrible) ideas to someone, the boys get themselves very excited when they know that their building is about to host a party for an ultra-rich celeb named Bey (Utkarsh Ambudkar). Unfortunately, there's one man (Jamie Demetriou) trying to keep unwanted members of the public away from Bae. And there are a bunch of criminals (led by Neal McDonough) about to crash the party and extort money from Bae, which gives our hapless lead characters the chance to become heroes.

If you like jokes about sperm, more gratuitous penis shots than any other comedy, even more gratuitous cameos, and a very open-minded approach to a wide variety of sexual preferences that would feel admirably progressive if every main instance of it mattering wasn't being used as a plot device, or for an easy joke, then this is the film for you.

I like Devine, and I like his usual douchebag persona, so I enjoyed some of his work here. I can't say the same about Holm (who also wrote the terrible script) and Anderson. There are hardly any other performers that I DID enjoy, sadly, with the exceptions of Demetriou, McDonough, and Rhona Mitra, and I just enjoyed Mitra because I hadn't seen her in anything for a while. Chloe Bridges tries hard, but isn't given enough to do, and Daniel Stern is stuck with the kind of role that a decade or so ago would have gone to someone like Chris Elliott.

Director Kyle Newacheck does an acceptable job, I'll grudgingly admit, with a decent way of shooting the action moments and the gags. It's that script, always that script, that undermines everything, feeling very much like something written by a bunch of drunk friends on a big night out who decided that they would very much like to star in an action comedy, but with as many unfunny jokes crammed in there as possible. I am sure that some will find the content here tasteless, while just as many others will find it hilarious. I just think it was all a bit too juvenile and didn't work with the action movie template.

This is advertised as being from the people who brought you Workaholics. Well, all I can say is that I won't be rushing to check out Workaholics. I also can't believe we get something like this while we are still deprived of a film version of One Fine Day In The Middle Of The Night. Netflix (because, yes, this is another one from them), start adapting Christopher Brookmyre works and you may regain some goodwill after recent mis-steps.

3/10

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