Spies in Disguise Review
PG: Action, violence, and rude humorRuntime: 1 Hr and 42 MinutesProduction Companies: Blue Sky Studios, Chernin Entertainment, 20th Century Fox AnimationDistributor: 20th Century FoxDirectors: Nick Bruno, Troy Quane Writers: Brad Copeland, Lloyd TaylorVoice Cast: Will Smith, Tom Holland, Rashida Jones, Ben Mendelsohn, Karen Gillan, Reba McEntire, Rachel Brosnahan, Masi Oka, DJ KhaledRelease Date: December 25, 2019What’s up with Blue Sky Studios and birds? For some reason, this decade alone, three of their eight features were centered on birds. In 2011, they released Rio, a movie about a Blue Macaw who can’t fly. In 2014, they released a sequel called Rio 2 which was admittingly just a blatant cash grab. Now in 2019, we have Spies in Disguise, a movie where a spy (voiced by Will Smith) is turned into a bird. Have they been listening to the Trashmen? Because apparently bird is the word.
Lance Sterling is the world’s greatest secret agent. Like many agents with the name Sterling, he’s a self-absorbed impatient hotshot with a high-class ego but the skillset and gadgets to compensate. In the middle of a secret mission, he uses a gadget that he thinks is a grenade but instead turns out to be a harmless yet hypnotizing glitter kitten bomb. After the mission goes well — or so he thinks — Lance decides to go chew out the designer of the bomb, which leads him to young scientist Walter Beckett. Though spies have a license to kill, Walter believes in designing weapons to save instead. Beckett introduces him to an invention that will make him invisible just in the nick of time as Sterling is framed for a crime against his agency, which he didn’t commit. Unfortunately, due to Sterling’s impatience, he drinks the tech, which transforms him into a pigeon. Now, Lance must save the world as a pigeon with Beckett’s aid.
I currently have a love/hate relationship with Blue Sky Studios. On one hand they make a solid original movies such as Ice Age or Rio and then beat it to a pulp with countless cash-grabs in the form of multiple sequels. Sometimes you get really good features such as Horton Hears a Who and Robots. Once in a blue moon, you’ll get a passionate work of art such as The Peanuts Movie, which proved that they had the tools to be an inspired and creative studio. In 2017 we got Ferdinand, but that was a mess. I remember liking it at the time because it was my palette cleanser for the last Ice Age movie, which was the studio’s low point to me, but then I kept remembering this:
Looking back on Ferdinand, the narrative was all over the place, taking constant detours that screwed up the pacing and structure of the movie. Thankfully, what Spies in Disguise ultimately prospers from is a cohesive story, which is saying a lot for this studio. The last time a feature of theirs had fluent consistency in story was their 2013 flick Epic and even that was mediocre at best. Spies in Disguise, on the other hand, is thoroughly entertaining to say the least. It doesn’t take a detour in the story to stop and deliver a dance sequence or whatnot. It stays consistent to its narrative and surprisingly incorporates a meaningful theme of humanitarianism. As weird as the premise seems, the story is more focused on Walter who dedicates his life to carrying out the legacy of his late mother who was a police officer that believed in saving lives rather than taking them. That’s ironic given her line of work, but let's not go there.
Considering that this was inspired by an animated 2019 short by Lucas Martell (who also went on to be a consultant on this), I commend Blue Sky for forming their own concept out of it while staying true to the source material. They didn’t pull a Sony and screw over the creator of that Pixels short which turned into that turd of an Adam Sandler movie. The people on this were inspired by Martell’s short and it shows, even as bizarre as the story is... and believe me, this gets bizarre. You think the premise is the weirdest thing about this? So many of the sequences have an excessive factor of weirdness and you can tell everyone on board was unapologetic about it. Because of Walter being an inventor of insane gadgetry, there are a number of sequences of characters getting utterly paralyzed in the most bizarre means possible. I'm not going to lie, Walter’s gadgets are awesome. They're things you'd find in a Ratchet and Clank game and they make for some fun fast-paced action sequences. You can tell the storyboard artists and animators had fun working on this. Lance’s transformation sequence might as well be something stripped out of a horror flick and that’s just a taste of how unapologetically weird this is. I personally took glee out of it. Some of the weird aspects about this actually managed to progress the story. Even though parts of it are nonsensical, they somehow make it make sense. The movie is not necessarily funny, but I admire it for being so deranged in the vein of not giving a damn regarding the kids watching.From the get-go, the film boasts bright, colorful, and stylish animation across the board. One of the major elements that stood out to me was the production design that gives the grand scale of an actual spy movie, like James Bond. Multiple distinct locations that Walter and Lance travel to feature such exquisite detail that I was left in awe. Even the detailing on the characters had me impressed. Compared to their first feature, Ice Age, where the human models were adequate and are now dated, it’s a marginal improvement. We’re at a state of animation where we can replicate feathers and human flesh in detail. There are shots of the human characters and their skin is detailed to a T and it’s even noticeable from a distance. Hell, my jaw dropped once I saw a closeup of Lance Sterling in action because his hair has a fade. If you’re a Black person or someone with naturally curly hair and you’re reading this, you know how distinct a fade hairstyle is. And I’ll be damned, this is the first CG movie I can think of where the Black dude has a fade. So yeah, when I say this is Blue Sky’s best looking animated feature to date, you better believe it.
Something that I admittingly admire is the character designs and how a majority of the cast members bear similar features to the voice actors that portrays them. They might as well be considered caricatures to an extent. Lance Sterling has the same size, build, and — oddly enough — facial hair as Smith. While tall queen Karen Gillan’s role is minimal and kind of thankless, her character bears the same height as her. Ben Mendelsohn voices the antagonist, who might as well be Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget, and he looks like a Ben Mendelsohn... or a character he’d voice. P.S.: Hollywood, please stop typecasting Ben Mendelsohn as a villain. He has range, okay!Masi Oka, which is a name I haven’t heard in nearly a decade (Hiro from Heroes), took me by surprise, for he voices an intimidating Japanese goon of such large stature and his voice performance didn’t sound anything like him. He’s the only voice actor who didn’t just deliver their natural voice, besides Holland whose American voice will always be Spider-Man no matter what.
Despite the animation being top-tier, the film is lacking in the writing department. Following the nature of a buddy comedy set on two polar opposites, I found myself getting annoyed at both of the leads in the early half of the movie. Given their different departments of work, they emphasize too much on their occupation being their characteristics, making them one-dimensional. Walter is a young nerd who is just so excruciatingly nerdy that it gets annoying. Every other line towards pigeon Lance is fun facts as to why being a pigeon spy triumphs over being a human spy as if Walter was a pigeon himself. Like, I get he's supposed to be this socially awkward and inept dude, but it's at an overbearing 10 all the way through until the emotional resonance between the two kicks in. In terms of Lance, his characteristics don’t matter because he just speaks like Will Smith. It's Will Smith using all his Will Smith-isms from the ‘90s and some of his slang doesn’t make sense. Like, he calls Walter “Joker” several times and I had to turn to my dad and ask, “What does ‘joker’ mean? Is that supposed to be an insult?” The banter between the two is funny at times, but when it's not, it’s annoying. Even in the joke department, I didn’t find much of the humor to be that funny. Some of the comic beats are oddly timed. Also, for the record, the Nickelback as torture joke has been played out to death.Now, to continue the conversation about Blue Sky Studios having a thing for birds… it needs to stop because they only seem to have one idea for a character’s arc. What if bird but also can’t fly? It was the character arc for Blu in Rio and it’s the arc for Lance in Spies, aside from the “learning how to be a team player” thing. Seriously though, I know recycling is good for the environment but not when it comes to tropes in your animated productions.
Okay, funny story regarding this. Because I am part of the Critics’ Choice Association, I got to watch a screener of this just in time for Thanksgiving. I watched it once on my own at my dad’s place for the holiday. The morning after, on Thanksgiving day, he comes into the room as I wake and asks, “Hey, what were you watching last night? It looked funny.” I told him, “Spies in Disguise”, and he asks, “Can we watch it tonight?” So, we watched it together that evening and despite my criticisms regarding how the humor didn’t completely work for me, it did numbers on my old man. He was bursting into laughter throughout. As I sat there watching his amusement, I started enjoying it more. Growing up, my dad was the one who took me to every… well, most theatrical animated movies in theaters. Now, I’m sharing an animated movie with him that he’s enjoying more than me and witnessing his joy made me a little bit nostalgic of my childhood. It’s probably because I’m 21 and this style of comedy isn’t for me, but I know for a fact that kids are going to have a blast with this film and so will their parents. Watching this with the old man truly warmed my heart. With that in mind, I have no other choice but to give it a pass. When it’s all said and done, Spies in Disguise is fun for the family and it has something for everyone. But seriously, Blue Sky, in the next decade, let’s not emphasize too much on bird movies. Please, it’s kind of played out. But I (can’t believe I’m saying this) wouldn’t mind a sequel.Rating: 3.5/5 | 71%
