Super spy Lance Sterling and scientist Walter Beckett are almost exact opposites. Lance is smooth, suave and debonair. Walter is… not. But what Walter lacks in social skills he makes up for in sm...
This or Frozen II? This or Frozen II?.... Whatever, both movies had mindforks during the end credits.
To say that Spies In Disguise reeks of "I've watched this film before" may be just enough to make you think of the kind of movie you'll be watching. But to say this was the best Will Smith performance of 2019 (between this, Aladdin 2019 and Gemini Man) was enough to give it a passing grade.
And when I mean "I've watched this before", I mean it. From the first second, you already know where it'll be going, even if there's still a bone in its body to make it stand out amongst other Animated Movies this year, thanks to the whole "Spy gets turned into a Pigeon" concept, which almost reaches its full potential once the "buddy cop" part of the movie goes on.
It's from there that the movie goes full-throttle, being busy just to make sure you're having a wild ride, between Action Sequences that feel like that's where the $110 Million budget mostly went to, a score that wants to be 007 but also wants to be emotive because Animated Movie.
The cast perfectly plays off of each other (obviously Ben Mendelsohn as the villain was Awesome as always) and the humor is hit or miss. Yes, even with a 50 Shades joke that I let it slide just fine, especially considering how Universal will soon destroy the magic of LEGO in theaters. And there's a nice message for kids too. Go weird and go wild, even if you're from somewhere else.
It could've been all great had it not been a "seen it, done it" situation. A big example of how familiar it is can be The LEGO Batman Movie. And, for being an Animated Movie, it sure doesn't have a look of its own. Sure, they play off "the characters need to look like the actors playing them" expertly, but other than that, it's your standard run-of-the-mill Animation, backgrounds and everything.
It also helps that I had a mindfork during the credits, since, apparently, Andrew Stanton (a Pixar veteran) and Meg LeFauve (writer of Inside Out) were credited as Consultants for the movie. Again, hard to decide if Frozen II was the better mindfork or this one.
Regardless, this is still an entertaining romp with a great duo, and iit easily features the best secondary character (besides Tom Holland) in an Animated Movie this year (ironically played by DJ Khaled). Like yeah, it's familiar and all, but it's better than Star Wars, that's something.
