I started a new job this week, having now moved up slightly in the world of Property & Facilities Management (and switching to a full time home based role, as opposed to having to go to an office to do my job) and as a consequence taking on a higher level of responsibility, all-in-all it has been a pretty full on week, hence why I pushed movie night back to this evening because yesterday my brain was literally fried. But the good news is I feel a bit more with it tonight, although not quite in the mood for anything too brain taxing, so I have chosen what could be, objectively, the worst Disney movie I've ever spotted, and potentially the worst movie Vin Diesel has ever been in; 2005's The Pacifier - a family comedy about a Navy SEAL taking care of a family... well known for his comedy routine, Vin Diesel... Maybe this movie will prove me wrong, maybe it won't?
Lieutenant Shane Wolfe (Vin Diesel), a Navy SEAL just gets done botching a mission and losing one the USA's Top Scientists; Professor Howard Plummer and potentially losing the "GHOST" software to foreign nations, when 2 months later after recovering in hospital, he gets assigned to protect the Plummer household, because he did such a good job last time... and children from state agents potentially looking to steal the deceased Professor's work on GHOST, whilst his wife travels to Zurich to potentially re-claim a backup copy. Having been at the house not less than 5 minutes before being bitten by a duck... called Gary... Lieutenant Wolfe proceeds to go about securing the perimeter, and installing security systems... que montage set to unoffensive pop punk... lovely. Lieut... look I'm shortening it to just Lieu alright? Lieu Wolfe then proceeds to upset the eldest daughter; Zoe (Brittany Snow) when he apprehends her boyfriend trying to sneak into the house, and by morning; everybody else when he wakes them all up with a whistle a 6.00am on a Sunday. Meanwhile Julie Plummer (Faith Ford) rocks up in Switzerland to retrieve a briefcase her husband left behind, only to discover it's password protected and she will be stuck in Switzerland for the next few days... Back at the house, after a painfully unfunny chase-fight scene - the kids nanny, Helga, quits leaving Lieu Wolfe to look after the family on his own. Later; after dropping the kids off at school, Lieu... I really regret the decision the call him that, it's getting annoying to type, let's call him; Shane. Shane is introduced to future movie love interest and Principal; Claire Fletcher (Lauren Graham) who just so coincidentally happens to have also served in the Navy... and total jerk, Vice Principal Dwayne Murney (Brad Garrett) who is a bit of a bellend... and apparently fixated on hating Seth Plummer (Max Thieriot) but that's enough of that because we have to have a pointless car chase scene that ends with Vin Diesel emerging from a sewer covered in shit. What am I watching? This isn't even funny... In the next scene, Lulu (Morgan York) has her Scout friends over and Shane is embarrassed about being naked from the top upwards in front of them... like... why?... Apart from them being a bit young, granted, I don't get it... is it supposed to be funny?... Anyway, returning to the... storyline, I guess, Shane gets back to the house after taking Lulu and her pals out for food to discover a house party has broken out, and after somehow commanding everybody to clean up after themselves, he discovers a CD-R with "GHOST" written on it whilst he is watched through the window by shadowy men in jumpsuits, who burst in the house and there is an.. actually pretty decently choreographed fight scene. It transpires the CD-R is just a copy of Ghost - the 1990 movie starring Whoppi Goldberg but the kids are now won over by Shane if nothing else and everyone promises to try and co-operate better. In the next scene, after following Seth who has dyed his hair blonde and started carrying a swastika armband... but it's fine; he's just a cast member in a 'The Sound of Music' remake, Shane ends up assuming the role of Director of said musical, and later when VP Murney gets all up in Seth's grill, Shane challenges him to a wrestling match, kicking his ass and giving a lesson to the rest of the school at the same time. Then we have another pop punk montage, with Good Charlotte this time! Where Shane is training all the kids up; teaching Zoe to drive, Seth to act, Lulu and the scouts to defend themselves from bullies... he successfully changes Peter, one of the other kids who has been too minor to worth mentioning before now... So... I wonder if anyone has found GHOST yet?... Uhh... no apparently. But after 2 weeks, Julie finally gets the password right and in the box is; a really big key... but that's enough of that because Shane and Zoe have to have an emotional moment. After telling the kids their mum will be coming home, Shane heads to the garage and discovers a hidden vault that requires a big key... what a coincidence. He puts a call in to Captain Fawcett (Chris Potter) (he sent Shane to look after the family, he's just not been important enough to mention until now) who orders him to remain at the house until they get home. When they arrive, Fawcett and Shane are ambushed in the garage by... the Chinese nextdoor neighbours; The Chuns but it transpires Fawcett is working for them, and they are North Korean Spies! And he incapacitates Shane and takes the rest of the family hostage. But using everything that they've been taught, the kids break free and take out Mr Chun, before waking up Shane in the garage. The kids escape in their mums car, because y'know, Zoe can drive now, with Mr Chun in hot pursuit. Meanwhile back underground, Shane offers to open the vault in exchange for Julie going free which Fawcett agrees to but doesn't let her go anyway... and Shane manages to reach the vault, dodging the obstacles by singing the song he learnt to get Peter off to sleep because exposition. And, taking advantage of a brief argument between Mrs Chen and Fawcett, Shane seizes the opportunity to take both of them out, and opens the vault to reveal... a really fancy SD card?... Meanwhile the kids have lead the police back to the house but not before Mr Chen returns brandishing a really big gun. He orders Shane to hand over GHOST, but Gary the Duck attacks him and Mr Chen gets taken out by a nice flying kick from Principal Fletcher who was just around I guess? With the whole ordeal over, Shane can finally focus on finishing that Sound of Music play, and getting off with Principal Fletcher. Yes! Called it!
Ffffuck. A lot happened in this movie?! And yet, not a lot happened. Calling this a 'comedy' is making the phrase 'comedy' do a lot of heavy lifting. It had it's mildly amusing moments, but comedy it was not and Vin Diesel is not a comedic actor. Not even close. But he did manage to show that he has a bit more range beyond being a muscly action flick actor. He wasn't... great.. but he was passable. To be honest, I didn't like, maybe, 70% of this movie. It just didn't work for me. It wasn't funny. it wasn't entertaining. It had it's moments where it was actually pretty decent; the fight scene was surprisingly well choreographed, when the movie wanted to tug on your heart strings it actually did it kind of well, and the whole GHOST sub-plot was actually decently written and woven in to the story quite neatly, but all of that played second fiddle to this movie supposedly being a family comedy and unfortunately, it just failed quite badly at that.
I don't think the problem, principally, was the acting. Vin Diesel, whilst clearly, obviously, a bit out of his depth here, was not awful in his role. He clearly demonstrated that he has a bit more range beyond being the action hero, but he wasn't funny and I felt like there was moments where he was supposed to be funny that just didn't translate well. The four kids, for the most part, were all pretty good, Morgan York as Lulu in particular was so obviously the strongest talent of the four that she played a more central role, and I'm gonna check right after I'm done writing this, but she should absolutely go on to do bigger and better things.
So no, the acting didn't really let this down, accounting for Vin Diesel, I think it was more that the script, despite packing in more action, more... stuff... happening that a 4 book collection of novella's, it really lacked the depth to make this an amusing, entertaining movie. There was a sprinkling of slapstick comedy, a sprinkling of gross out humour, a sprinkling of funny gags but none of it was laugh out loud, none of it really pushed the envelope. It was almost more of an action movie than it was a comedy movie, and that's ok if that's your target demographic, but it so obviously wasn't here. It seemed so obvious that they were trying to make a comedy in the vein of say, Kindergarten Cop or Junior, but unfortunately Vin Diesel just doesn't have the range like Arnold Schwarzenegger does.
Aside from that, there's very little else I can really analyse. The cinematography was fine. The soundtrack was very much a stereotypical Disney movie and very much of it's time with the softcore Pop Punk songs playing over the montage scenes. There isn't anything in that area that I can criticize but similarly nothing really stood out as remarkable. There were a few odd shoots that were above average in terms of cinematic production, the action scenes, the fight scene in particular all shot really well, but nothing that I thought was crazy visually impressive.
The Pacifier was a funny one for me. I didn't enjoy this movie, at least; I didn't enjoy the sum of it parts, taken individually and there were elements I found enjoyable and in particular was impressed with Morgan York so it scored a few points and as critical as I've been here of Vin Diesel, I didn't... not enjoy... him in this. Actually, I quite liked him and he endeared himself to a degree to the viewer, but I felt he was really trying to be forced to work beyond his range in a movie that really didn't push itself far enough in any one direction to assume that as it's definition. It's thinly spread; it's not a comedy, it's not an action movie, it's not a family film, it's kind of some quasi cinema blended smoothie of all three and in the blending you lose the distinct taste of the individual flavours. 2 out of 5.
