Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx probably got a good workout filming the fight scenes in “Back in Action,” the latest high-gloss junk from Netflix. Clearly the actors earned their paychecks in a way that the person who thought up the title did not.
Directed by Seth Gordon (“Horrible Bosses”) and written by Gordon and Brendan O’Brien, the movie is — spins wheel of wildly overused premises — an action comedy in which a married couple who met as spies but are now parents emerge from retirement, putting their children in danger.
We first encounter Matt (Foxx) and Emily (Diaz) in a pre-suburban-living prologue, as they steal a fancy MacGuffin (“a master key for some of the world’s most critical infrastructure”) from an Eastern European terrorist. On their getaway plane, no sooner has Emily told Matt that she’s pregnant than the crew members reveal themselves to be working for the bad guys.
A jauntily staged skirmish breaks out — while Dean Martin croons “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head” on the soundtrack, the pilot’s accidental death is treated as a sight gag — but somehow Emily and Matt make their exit, a maneuver that requires fewer twists than any self-respecting “Mission: Impossible” entry would have settled for. Presumed dead in the plane crash, the couple now have the opportunity to ditch their careers as covert operatives.
Flash forward a decade and a half, and they are raising a 14-year-old, Alice (McKenna Roberts), who hates them, and a 12-year-old, Leo (Rylan Jackson), who is marginally more compliant and a big tech nerd. When Matt and Emily violently retrieve the underage Alice from a nightclub, footage of them goes viral (“boomers wreck dance party”) and blows their cover. Soon their awakened enemies force them to jump to Britain, where a slimy agent (Andrew Scott) is ready to pounce, and Emily will be forced to make amends with her estranged mother, Ginny, also a retired operative. The revelation of the actress playing Ginny warranted a more eccentric surprise than Glenn Close.
With characters who seem designed as place holders for a future franchise rather than necessities in this one (the comedian Jamie Demetriou turns up as Ginny’s sheepish trainee-paramour), “Back in Action” has a better cast than its (often mawkish) writing earns. Mostly, the familiarity takes its toll. A wrong-direction car chase is a long way from “To Live and Die in L.A.,” notwithstanding the choice to add a grenade made from Diet Coke and Mentos. And somehow after taking a plunge in the Thames, Alice and Leo are completely dry upon rescue. Evidently the person who coined the title wasn’t the only one who couldn’t be bothered.
Back in Action
Rated PG-13. Snooping parents, disobedient children. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
