Being asked to direct a movie like G-Force is the equivalent of a singer being offered a gig as frontman for the FreeCreditReport.com band: it's not exactly what you had in mind when you got into the business. But when you've been working with Jerry Bruckheimer, the man partially to blame for at least one awful summer blockbuster a year since Armageddon, your taste in film is probably a tad questionable to begin with.
To be fair, first-time director Hoyt Yeatman has spent years doing visual effects, and G-Force is nothing if not visually exciting. Talking secret agent guinea pigs look as realistic as their flesh-and-blood co-stars, whether they're narrowly escaping the jaws of a guard dog or taking down a coffee maker-turned-battle mech. This marks Bruckheimer's first venture into the undeniably gimmicky world of 3-D and the film takes full advantage of the technology. Nearly every shot features something bursting out of the letterbox to a series of "ewws" and "ahhs" from the audience.
To be fair, first-time director Hoyt Yeatman has spent years doing visual effects, and G-Force is nothing if not visually exciting. Talking secret agent guinea pigs look as realistic as their flesh-and-blood co-stars, whether they're narrowly escaping the jaws of a guard dog or taking down a coffee maker-turned-battle mech. This marks Bruckheimer's first venture into the undeniably gimmicky world of 3-D and the film takes full advantage of the technology. Nearly every shot features something bursting out of the letterbox to a series of "ewws" and "ahhs" from the audience.
Keeping with the positive, G-Force has a killer cast for a family flick. Sam Rockwell voices the leader of G-Force, a would-be special agent guinea pig named Darwin. Darwin and his teammates, guinea pigs Juarez (Penélope Cruz) and Buster (Tracy Morgan) are part of a secret government program that trains animals in the art of espionage. Oh yeah, they also found a way to make them talk. Ben (Zach Galifianakis) and Marcie (Kelli Garner) manage the operation and are desperate to prove the G-Force's worth before an FBI supervisor (Will Arnett) shuts the program down.
Bruckheimer go-to guy Nicolas Cage voices a visually impaired mole named Speckles and manages to not sound like himself, which is about the biggest compliment I could pay him. It's also worth mentioning that for some reason there's a cameo by songwriter Loudon Wainwright.
After blowing a covert operation to hack the computer of Leonard Saber (Bill Nighy), a billionaire bent on world domination via consumer appliances, G-Force goes on the run to redeem themselves as special agents and attempt to save the world.The entire plot is easy enough for little tykes to follow and includes the typical stuff you'd expect from a spy movie: high-tech gadgetry, car chases and double crosses.
Though they only play minor roles, Arnett and Galifianakis provide a few chuckles. Galifianakis doesn't have a ton of screen time, but fans of the fuzzy-faced comedian will find plenty to laugh about. Just watching a dead serious and teary-eyed Galifianakis tell a guinea pig "I've always believed in you" may alone be worth the price of admission.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Morgan. Excluding his hilarious work on 30 Rock, Morgan's roles are little more than soulless, borderline insulting caricatures of a black dude. A guinea pig saying "pimp my ride" and "fo' shizzle" may get some cheap laughs from kids and middle-aged parents, but the whole, "black-people-talk-funny" bit is pretty low-brow, especially when compared to the stuff Pixar's doing. Sadly, that's the level of humor throughout most of this movie. But even at under 90 minutes, G-Force drags with a couple of yawn-inducing stretches when attempts at comedy take a backseat to a series of flaccid action scenes.
While it's not up to Pixar standards, G-Force is still miles above most of the movies Dreamworks craps out nowadays. Sure, it's cliché, and the jokes could be better, but if you're the kind of person that thinks you might enjoy G-Force, chances are you will. As for everyone else, G-Force isn't terrible, but not particularly entertaining either — it's a forgettable evening that could just have easily been spent ignoring your kids at home rather than paying $10 bucks to do it at the theater.
--Eric Pulsifer
Bruckheimer go-to guy Nicolas Cage voices a visually impaired mole named Speckles and manages to not sound like himself, which is about the biggest compliment I could pay him. It's also worth mentioning that for some reason there's a cameo by songwriter Loudon Wainwright.
After blowing a covert operation to hack the computer of Leonard Saber (Bill Nighy), a billionaire bent on world domination via consumer appliances, G-Force goes on the run to redeem themselves as special agents and attempt to save the world.The entire plot is easy enough for little tykes to follow and includes the typical stuff you'd expect from a spy movie: high-tech gadgetry, car chases and double crosses.
Though they only play minor roles, Arnett and Galifianakis provide a few chuckles. Galifianakis doesn't have a ton of screen time, but fans of the fuzzy-faced comedian will find plenty to laugh about. Just watching a dead serious and teary-eyed Galifianakis tell a guinea pig "I've always believed in you" may alone be worth the price of admission.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Morgan. Excluding his hilarious work on 30 Rock, Morgan's roles are little more than soulless, borderline insulting caricatures of a black dude. A guinea pig saying "pimp my ride" and "fo' shizzle" may get some cheap laughs from kids and middle-aged parents, but the whole, "black-people-talk-funny" bit is pretty low-brow, especially when compared to the stuff Pixar's doing. Sadly, that's the level of humor throughout most of this movie. But even at under 90 minutes, G-Force drags with a couple of yawn-inducing stretches when attempts at comedy take a backseat to a series of flaccid action scenes.
While it's not up to Pixar standards, G-Force is still miles above most of the movies Dreamworks craps out nowadays. Sure, it's cliché, and the jokes could be better, but if you're the kind of person that thinks you might enjoy G-Force, chances are you will. As for everyone else, G-Force isn't terrible, but not particularly entertaining either — it's a forgettable evening that could just have easily been spent ignoring your kids at home rather than paying $10 bucks to do it at the theater.
--Eric Pulsifer
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