Secondhand Reviews: "The Spy Next Door"

I've been a Jackie Chan fan for a good 25 years now, since before his Asian films ever got releases in the U.S. and long before American films like "Rush Hour". I can remember when a new Jackie Chan movie always meant a martial arts and/or action classic like "Project A" or "Police Story", and I've suffered through a long, long series of American releases in recent years that clearly show that... with very few exceptions... Hollywood film makers simply do not understand what makes him the star he is and have no idea how to use him. I still go to new Chan American releases, but with dread more than anticipation these days. That dread has rarely been more justified by any movie than it is by "The Spy Next Door".

Jackie, after playing a character named Chon Wang (sounds like John Wayne, get it? Oh, the hysteria!) here plays a guy named Bob Ho (Bob Hope... how do they come up with these?). Everyone in his neighborhood thinks Bob is a dull, boring salesman for a company that makes ballpoint pens... everyone including his girlfriend, a single mother whose three kids happen to hate Bob. Bob is dragged into a hunt for a sinister supervillain who wants to kill him just as his girlfriend has to make an emergency out of town trip and leaves the kids in his care, hoping they'll finally be able to bond. Do they happen to get involved in his battles against evil? Well, let me put it this way... are romantic comedies formulaic? Is the Pope Catholic?

The first warning sign is the fact that the movie is directed by Brian Levant, one of the absolutely schlockiest directors in the business, the guy who has given us such "classics" of comedy as both "Flintstones" movies, "Beethoven", and who completely removed all the danger from Ice Cube and made him warm and fuzzy in "Are We There Yet?" (which happened to be a story about a guy romantically involved with a single mother whose kids hated him and who gets stuck taking care of them when mom has to make an emergency out of town trip... clearly nothing like "The Spy Next Door" in any way whatsoever). This is a guy who still has the bizarre impression that speeding up the film so that characters move like The Flash is actually funny and original, and who treats us to this several times in this film. Maybe one day he'll wake up and become aware that everything he does has been done in every other family comedy of the past 20 years. Unfortunately, that day is not yet.

Then, Jackie... who has had the best in the business starring opposite him in his Chinese films, people like Michelle Yeoh, Sammo Hung and Maggie Cheung... gets saddled with co-stars like George Lopez, one of the three or four least funny comedians in the business and someone who wouldn't even rank at all on a list of the most talented actors, playing his spy supervisor, and... shudder... Billy Ray Cyrus as one of his co-workers. If you think nobody could possibly make Miley Cyrus look like a brilliantly talented genius, you clearly have never seen her father act... or, more properly, attempt to. As for the child actors who play the kids... i would be totally shocked if any of them have any kind of future in acting other than in grade school plays (I say grade school because I don't think they have enough talent for high school plays). But the reasons to get depressed about this movie don't end there.

I realize that Jackie Chan is more than 30 years older now than he was in the days when he became famous for movies like "Drunken Master" and "Snake In Eagle's Shadow"... heck, he's nearly as old as I am... and we shouldn't be expecting him to be able to do all the same kinds of amazing stunts he used to be able to do. And I can deal with that... his Chinese films give a good indication of the kinds of movies he's still capable of now and where his direction might go. But either American audiences are so limited they'll never be able to accept him as anything other than the ultimate action star, or film makers think they are. The result is the same: tricky camera work and occasional obvious stunt doubles covering up the obvious. It's especially dismaying to see them use the old "show Jackie throwing a high kick, then cut to someone's leg, not necessarily his, connecting" trick instead of showing the whole fight in frame.

Notice that I haven'e made any remarks about the comedy in the movie. Nothing said about lame jokes, the same jokes being repeated endless times, totally unfunny jokes being shouted at top volume on the "louder is funnier" theory, and absolutely nothing whatsoever about the attempts, late in the film, to turn the whole thing into a heartwarming tearjerker as Jackie delivers an embarassing speach about what family really is. And you're not GOING TO find me saying a word about any of that, either... no sir, not a word. I mean, this is a Brian Levant film. The fact that all of those things are present in it should go without saying.

I kind of liked the first "Rush Hour" (only the first) and ""Shanghai Noon" (but not so much the sequel), and "The Forbidden Kingdom" was actually a real surprise, giving both Jackie and Jet Li worthy roles in an American film for once. But that's about as far as it goes. As his American releases have gone further and further downhill with dreck like "The Tuxedo" and an upcoming remake of "The Karate Kid" (no, I'm not making this up!), even Jackie himself has apparently come to realize how things are, and has officially announced that from now on, his American films are essentially going to be nothing more than his way of getting money to make his REAL movies, in China. Unfortunately, American studios have so little confidence in audiences being able to accept any kind of unorthodox Chan movies that those films (like the excellent "New Police Story") never get theatrical releases in the U.S. any more. But they can be found on DVD, and as much as it goes against my "always see a movie in a theatre" policy, if you want the real Jackie Chan that's the only way to go. It does have the advantage that you won't find the names Brian Levant, George Lopez or Billy Ray Cyrus anywhere in sight.