BACK IN ACTION (Seth Gordon)
There's been a lot of trumpeting about Seth Gordon's action comedy marking the return of Cameron Diaz to our screens.
But that immediately begs the question: why has the San Diego-born star chosen this as her first acting vehicle in 10 years?
It's a pertinent question because you'd imagine it would have taken a script that was really special to coax Diaz back into work after what she says were 10 of the best years of her life.
If it were a beezer of a script, that would be easy to swallow but Gordon and Brendan O'Brien's screenplay is a script is so lacking in imagination and originality, you really have to wonder why the 52 year old even bothered getting out of bed for it.
Diaz plays Emily, a former CIA operative who along with her husband, Jamie Foxx's Matt has assumed a new identity as suburban parents in Atlanta after surviving an attempt to wipe them out on their final spy mission in Poland.
Raising a moody teenage daughter, McKenna Roberts' Alice and her gaming obsessed younger son, Rylan Jackson's Leo is hard for the couple.
Their cover is eventually blown after catching Alice underage drinking in a nightclub, resulting in a viral video clip when Emily loses her cool with some obnoxious punters who stick their noses in the family's business.
Soon the couple's old CIA colleague, Kyle Chandler's Chuck is on their doorstep warning them about mercenaries trying to track them down and when they are attacked within seconds of his arrival, the couple have to flee their home, grab the kids from schoand go on the run to London where they suspect Emily's ex MI6 boyfriend, Andrew Scott's Baron is trying to hunt them down.
Glenn Close pops up as Emily's gun toting mum, a legendary MI6 assassin called Ginny and Jamie Demetriou as her toyboy, a trainee agent called Nigel.
The couple are being pursued because Matt buried on Ginny's country estate a powerful device swiped from Poland called The Key with the power to control the infrastructure of big cities.
But who really cares in a story that simply assembles bits of 'Mr and Mrs Smith,' the 'Mission Impossible,' 007, Jason Bourne franchises and 'Indiana Jones' in a way that is so devoid of passion?
Boring slow mo action set pieces are glossed with dollops of Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Lauryn Hill, Etta James, Teddy Pendergrass, James Brown and Salt N Pepa tracks.
Meanwhile Gordon and O'Brien seem to have grabbed armfuls of rejected quips from the Ryan Reynolds' factory of poor wiseass jokes.
What we're left with is a rather tawdry spectacle of really good actors who are capable of doing much, much better going through the motions in a Netflix movie that has nothing new to offer.
As Jamie Lee Curtis, Demi Moore and Pamela Anderson reboot their careers with daring material, Diaz has opted to play it safe on her return and has turned in one of the worst movies of her often unsatisfactory career.
The fact that the film she has chosen for her comeback has gone straight to Netflix without even a whiff of a cinema release says it all.
Time to go back to the drawing board
('Back In Action' was released on Netflix on January 17, 2025)
BANK OF DAVE 2: THE LOAN RANGER (Chris Foggin)
If there is one film you'd have put money on spawning a sequel, I'm not sure Chris Foggin's 2023 Netflix comedy drama 'Bank of Dave' would have been one.
An account of how the Burnley businessman, Dave Fishwick took on the high street banking chains by setting up his own community bank, it was a pleasant enough diversion but it was hardly ambitious or that deep.
Nevertheless the film performed well enough for the streamer to option a sequel, with Rory Kinnear's community hero returning to take on the payday loan companies who have bled many vulnerable working class folk in the UK dry by charging extortionate rates of interest.
In Foggin and writer Piers Ashworth's tarted up version of events, Dave ends up recruiting Chrissy Metz's New York based financial journalist Jessica and Amit Shah's shy Citizen Advice Bureau worker Oliver to gis crusade to expose the nasty American companies exploiting loopholes in the UK to drain decent folk of their cash.
This brings them directly into conflict with Rob Delaney's New Jersey gangster posing as a legitimate businessman Carlo Mancini and his unscrupulous British barrister Leila Farzad's Margot who will stop at no underhand tactic to discredit him.
However with a smart wife Jo Hartley's Nicky, Jessica's New Jersey Detective ex Dan Folger's Mitch Adams, Def Leppard and the good people of Burnley on Dave's side, they've got another thing coming if they think they're going to defeat him.
Foggin delivers a film which, like the original, takes quite a few dramatic liberties with the story that inspired it but still trades on a lot of charm, even if it is a bit surface.
There's no doubting the movie's good intentions but there's no real desire to interrogate too deeply the horrendous impact of payday loans on some of the borrowers depicted in the film.
'Bank of Dave 2' would clearly rather be 'The Full Monty' than 'I, Daniel Blake' and that's fine until you remember that Peter Cattaneo's bawdy Oscar nominated 1997 comedy still managed to pack one hell of a social conscience punch while delivering many laughs.
Kinnear, Hartley, Metz, Shah and Fogler breeze through the proceedings with a lot of charm while Delaney and Farzad relish their roles as pantomime villains.
Hugh Bonneville pops up briefly to reprise his role as the British banking establishment figure Sir Charles while the real Dave lurks about in various cameo roles and Def Leppard makes another appearance.
It's nice, crowd pleasing, low budget fun and yet for all its lack of ambition, Foggin's film is still a hundred times more entertaining than its big budget, Seth Gordon directed Netflix action comedy stablemate.
At least, it has real heart.
('Bank of Dave 2: The Loan Ranger' was released on Netflix on January 10, 2025)
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