The Spy Next Door

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It's been a while since they made one of these: The Spy Next Door is an action-comedy that sees kids overpower muscular bad guys with silly accents who end up falling into pools or drowned in sludge or something (a lengthy but official genre title back in the '80s when there was one of these every week). For Jackie Chan this is a pay cheque movie, nothing more.

Chan plays Bob Ho, a pen importer living next door to single mother Gillian (Valletta). She's put the skids on the burgeoning romance because her three kids - cutie kid Nora (Alina Foley), nerdy tween Ian (Shadley) and bitchy teen Farren (Carroll) - think Bob is a total bore, and for Gillian the kids come first. If only they knew... Bob is actually a secret spy working with the CIA to bring down Russian bad guy Poldark (Magnus Scheving), who is concocting a plan to burn the world's oil supplies and make Russia's oil reserves priceless. Offering to look after the kids while Gillian leaves town to tend to her sick father, our super spy learns that Poldark has tracked down a file that was sent to Bob's computer - a file that Ian has downloaded to his iPod thinking it a concert of his favourite band. That will bring the bad guys right to Bob's door...

The Spy Next Door is a movie for the young, or the very young, or the very, very young; it's tough to figure out these days what kids will find naff or not. It's still fun to see Chan doing his own stunts and using everything in the room to beat the bad guys, whether it be a chair, a BMX or a fridge, but at 56 those stunts aren't as adventurous as they used to be and it's looking like it's all getting too much for him. The action scenes are severely trimmed back here with Chan's talents reduced to, for the most part, making breakfast as fast as he can. Whether that's a budget problem or lack of invention on behalf of the filmmakers is unclear. An inoffensive (unless you're Russian, of course) family comedy, The Spy Next Door is occasionally fun but ultimately forgettable stuff. Stick around for the outtakes that run over the end credits, as they're the funniest element on show.