A professional athlete has to help a U.S. government agent recover a missing jet.
Eddie Murphy teams up with Owen Wilson in a comedy spy movie meant to keep you laughing for an hour and forty minutes but instead makes you wish you could send them to separate rooms until they can behave. Maybe it’s because I am a mom but the lack of communication between the two and the massive egos just made me want to clunk their heads together. Seriously, my three children listen better than these knuckleheads.
The plot is simple enough, the president asks professional title-holding boxer Kelly Robinson (Eddie Murphy) to help in a secret spy mission with secret agent Alex Scott (Owen Wilson) to stop the sale of an invisible plane in Budapest. No joke, Kelly tells all of his fans and associates he’s off to do secret work for the president. He strokes his ego to the point of ridiculousness and I wanted to shut the dang movie off. To make matters worse, he immediately clashes with his secret operative Alex acting like siblings left in the house on a long rainy summer week.
Both bicker back and forth, trying to gain the upper hand and it never stops until they end up in a sewer together where they have a girlfriend-boyfriend heart-to-heart moment and find they have a lot more in common than the inability to never shut up. Meanwhile, they bungle up the mission in Budapest, repeatedly trying to find the airplane by following around the owner, Gundars (Malcolm McDowell), who of course is trying to make a little dough selling it to the highest bidder.
Secret agent Rachel (Famke Janssen) assists with the mission but mainly serves as a romantic distraction to keep the bumbling plot marching forward. Alex can’t work up the nerve to ask Rachel out so instead, with fancy spy gear, Kelly walks Alex through repeating the lyrics to “Sexual Healing” to get into her bed. Sadly, this was the best scene in the movie as they didn’t spend the entire time arguing.
Even the spy gear wasn’t worth the time as Alex’s gear wasn’t up to par with Carlo’s gear as he finished more missions and even came to rescue Alex and Kelly after they still couldn’t find the jet hidden in plain sight. Of course, someone serves as a double agent and turns on Alex right as he finds the plane and is in the process of taking care of the bad guys. Not a single aspect of the movie offers any surprise just mayhem.
Eddie and Owen never teamed up for another movie. If you don’t mind siblings bickering feel free to grab the movie now that it’s on Blu-ray. Some may enjoy the non-stop lack of communication issues and the small attempts at humor. The film moves at a fast pace at any rate making it not a complete waste of time. “Kingsman: The Secret Service” offers more humor and better chemistry if you would rather a better pick.
Now available on Blu-ray from Mill Creek Entertainment
