Movie Review - Spies in Disguise

This film came out on Christmas and was one of the 2019 flicks that I overlooked. It didn't seem like it would be a film that would be carried on its acclaim or box office. However, it's the third of four films starring Will Smith to be released in less than a year. It's also the first of two films starring Will Smith to be released in less than a month. I saw this film as part of a double feature with Smith's Bad Boys for Life (2020). Despite both having Smith as one of the leads and both being action flicks, I wouldn't assume that both would have as much in common in terms of theme and messaging. In certain ways, both films are critiques of cinema culture and the violence therein, while also trying to have its cake and eat it too. Except, here it's more about having its cake but not eating it too. For lack of a better phrase, this film sticks to its guns with the idea of not depicting or perpetuating violence and specifically death, even if it's the deaths of bad guys. Both Bad Boys for Life and this one underline the rebuke of fighting-fire-with-fire or that of revenge or hitting back harder. Yet, this one sells that rebuke better.

Not getting nominated at the Oscars makes sense. It didn't make as much money as Toy Story 4 and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. It doesn't come from a beloved studio like Laika and utilizes a preferred animation style as Klaus (2019). It also didn't get the kind of critical buzz as I Lost My Body. With the exception of Klaus though, I would prefer this animated feature over all those other, aforementioned cartoons. The 92nd Academy Awards has been accused of its lack of diversity. This is true in the Best Animated Feature category. The previous two years in this category not only had nominees with diverse casts, but the previous two winners were films of diverse casts. Having a film starring one of the most popular, African-American actors in the world in this year's category would have done a lot to counteract that narrative. It also would've counteracted the narrative against Hollywood favoring sequels and other sheer cash-grabs.

Will Smith voices Lance Sterling, a James Bond-type but who is American and works for some spy agency, based in Washington, DC. He's tall, handsome, smooth and very confident, almost to the point of being cocky. One could see Lance Sterling as a spoof of James Bond and similar characters in cinema like that of Ethan Hunt from the Mission: Impossible film series. This film is in fact loosely based on a short called Pigeon: Impossible (2009). The makers of this film though might be doing what the makers of the recent The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (2019) did. In that film, the makers decided to spoof the career of Chris Pratt who was the vocal star there. Lance Sterling could be seen very much as a spoof of Will Smith's career.

Over and over again, Smith has played characters in films that are smooth and very confident, almost cocky. He's also been famous for over 30 years. There is a scene in this film where Lance steps into his office and all his co-workers fawn over him, as if he were a celebrity like Will Smith. The writers of this film might not be specifically commenting on Smith's career, but obviously, someone of his stature fits the role here. Yet, if this film were commenting on Smith's career, it's clear that Smith isn't going to listen. Smith is probably going to increase the amount of violent films he does, not reduce. Instead, the commentary here is more toward the culture-at-large and how people should react or even how governments should react when faced with the possibility of violence or war.

Tom Holland voices Walter Beckett, a young inventor who works at the same agency as Lance. Walter is relegated to a cramped office-space near the bathroom because no one wants to associate with him. Walter is seen as weird. His weirdness though stems from the fact that he wants to invent devices that aren't then used as weapons to hurt people. He instead wants to invent things that protect people from harm, even if it's bad guys. If this were a James Bond film, Walter would be the character of "Q." Yet, Walter isn't for making gadgets that can be used as firearms or bombs, which is what Lance demands. Walter is for gadgets that protect or pacify.

The comedy and drama that unfold comes from that push and pull. Lance demands violent solutions and Walter insists upon peaceful solutions. Instead of being able to use his body, which could be seen as the last weapon at Lance's disposal, even when all the gadgets are taken away, an invention of Walter's takes away Lance's body. Literally, an accident at Walter's house transforms Lance into a pigeon. Now, Lance becoming a pigeon could be a metaphor of the films's overall theme of preferring peace over violence. Despite pigeons being known for engaging in revenge or revenge-like behavior, the birds are related to doves, which are seen as symbols of love and peace. So, in order to get Lance to see that there are peaceful alternatives, he is literally transformed into the symbol for peace. There's also the joke that is made prior to Lance's transformation where he says he "flies solo," so obviously the lesson to be learned is how he shouldn't fly solo but instead be a team player.

Of course, this film couldn't grapple with themes of war and peace in a modern context without grappling with modern techniques of war-and-peace. Like with so many films that have come since the Obama administration, this film has drones as a centerpiece and as the ultimate expression of death and destruction. Films like Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019) have already used drones in the way that this film decides to use them. Holland was the lead in Spider-Man: Far From Home, so having him battling an army of flying drones felt like déjà vu, but I think the resolution works incredibly well here.

Finally, it must be said that there are plenty of bird jokes, as facts about how birds behave are revealed. There are also plenty of jokes at the expense of seeing Lance as a bird along with other birds try to be spies. A mutli-pen that acts like the utility belt from Batman (1966) is a source of a lot of humor as it spews things like silly string and glitter, but the repeated bit of humor that most impressed me had to be the repeated use of male nudity. There are two sequences in this film that put male nudity center on the screen, if not on full display. Of course, it's not full-frontal, but Lance and Kimura, a bad guy who resembles a sumo wrestler, voiced by Masi Oka (Heroes and Hawaii Five-0), are both totally removed of their clothes in two scenes. In particular to Kimura's scene, the trickiness that comes with pulling that scene off without making it a R-rated flick was fairly clever.

Rated PG for action, violence and rude humor.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 42 mins.