BEFORE: Will Smith carries over from "Gemini Man" (don't worry, Mary Elizabeth Winstead will be back in mid-October), and together with "Aladdin" earlier this year, after tonight I've cleared the Will Smith category once again. Three films released in the last two years, all of which had him playing some kind of cop or secret agent - I'm not saying he's typecast, but he's certainly in some kind of pocket. All of his recent films seem like they sort of riffed off of "Men in Black", but in the MIB films he was always the junior member of the lead duo, and in these three films it seems like he's been the senior member, so I guess that's progress.
I've taken to writing limericks on Twitter, mostly related to the pandemic or the upcoming election - what happened was, I wrote one limerick and a friend commented on how clever and next-level it was, and sometimes that's all the positive reinforcement I need. I guess that's what happened with my first few blog posts, and now look where I am almost twelve years later. Once I find something to do I make it "my thing" and then it's just easier to keep going than to stop.
But it occurs to me how much a limerick is like a successful movie plot - stay with me here - even though a movie's story is traditionally told in six acts and a limerick is always just five lines, some of the main principles are the same. First you need an opening line, that's like the movie's premise, simply stated. Then the second line has to follow logically, and also rhyme with it - this is like the second part of a movie, which extends the premise or shows a reaction to or fallout from the opening act.
The third line is critical, it's "the turn", where a new complication is introduced, or a plot twist of some kind that changes the whole story. The fourth line has to rhyme with the third, so that's the hero dealing with the plot twist, fighting back against the unspeakable evil, and ideally also setting up the conclusion at the same time. The fifth line can be the toughest, because it's got to represent a longshot and introduce a new idea at the last minute, but it also has to rhyme with the first two lines, just like a movie's 5th act has to use something that came before to solve the problems introduced in Acts 3 & 4. At the same time, it has to be witty and also tie up all the loose ends in a satisfying, yet somehow also slightly unexpected way. That's a lot to ask of that last line, and it also explains why so many films have disappointing endings - plus once you know what to look for, you can sometimes spot the little detail in the opening act that's going to be very important later.
For my little analogy, five lines representing six acts, I'm kind of ignroing the six act, which is the denouement - this is that little addendum that shows how everything's going to be OK after the climax, in recent times this has become just a little aside that teases the next installment in the franchise, anyway. (Think of the ending of "The Empire Strikes Back", all it did was set up the next movie...). So this can be easily ignored when squeezing six acts into five lines - so here would be an example of the plot of "Gemini Man" in limerick form:
There's a hit-man who wants to retire
But the agency would rather he expire
So they send in his clone
But now he's no longer alone
And they team up to take down the Colonel, that liar!
See, it's all there - the set-up with the premise, then the complication or imperfect situation, then comes the unexpected twist with the central conflict, followed by the reaction to the twist that's also an unlikely plan for the final conflict. Everything culminates in line 5, the long shot against the ultimate opposition, the final push during which everything seems lost, until it isn't. This is the formula for ALL MOVIES, but perhaps it's easiest to see this with action movies that generally all adhere to this formula. It works for most comedic and dramatic movies, too, except for those that set out to defy the formula, and when you watch one of those, something might feel a bit off.
Hey, I may do all my reviews in limerick form from now on! Just kidding.
THE PLOT: When the world's best spy is turned into a pigeon, he must rely on his nerdy tech officer to save the world.
AFTER: The other thing about limericks is that you only have so many lines, and a limited number of syllables in each one - so most of the time you really have to choose your words carefully to fit your ideas in. This is another filmmaking lesson, a movie has a time limit, too - society has set two hours as the limit, but movies for kids have to try to get closer to 90 minutes, because of shorter attention spans. "Spies in Disguise" clocks in at 102 minutes, so it didn't QUITE get there, but it came close. Now if THIS movie's plot was in limerick form it might be:
A top secret agent with poise
Has a nerd partner creating tech toys.
Some DNA from a bird
Creates a battle absurd
While the villain's drone army deploys.
OK, so it's not Shakespeare, but it proves my point. I thought about rhyming "pigeon" with something like "DNA (just a smidgeon)" but that felt really forced, plus then two lines would have been spent on the same idea, and there's no room for that, you've got to keep that limerick moving if you're going to get to the final wrap-up idea. And putting the words "nerd" and "partner" so close together suggests a new portmanteau word, "partnerd", defined as the lesser member of a team in a spy movie, responsible for creating gadgets or getting valuable intel to the lead agent. "Q" in the Bond films is the ultimate partnerd, but there are many other fine examples.
But even though this film fits the formula - perhaps even a little TOO well, it still manages to go off in some very unusual tangential directions. And you can do that with animation, you can have a secret agent who gets turned into a bird, but then again, why that? I have to remind myself, it's a year full of weird movies, so anything and everything is possible, but then I still have to wonder, why was THAT plot point so important to somebody? Do kids love pigeons that much? When somebody landed on this idea, what was it that made somebody say "Aha! That's our story!" because really, it's so far out there that it almost does a lap around weird and comes back again for another go. The movie simultaneously portrays pigeons as the ultimate disguise for a secret agent, with stealth, flight, a full range of vision, being so common around the world as to essentially be invisible, and other so-called positives, while at the same time being annoying, dumb, attracted to eating garbage and also pooping everywhere. So, is turning someone into a pigeon a good choice or a bad choice? Somehow it's both, but then why not choose something with fewer negatives?
Of course, the concept of genetic mutation is really dumbed down here for the kids - even though there's a nod to CRISPR and things like DNA sequencing, essentially movies haven't come all that far from the "Jekyll & Hyde" days, where someone can drink a magic potion and turn into something else. And again, if a teenager can develop technology that will turn a man into an animal, why a damn pigeon? Is this a nerd thing, going back to characters like Bert on Sesame Street, who also famously loved pigeons? The truth is that this feature is loosely based on an animated short called "Pigeon: Impossible", so that's part of the reason why here, but they could have changed it to any other bird or any other animal and created a different storyline.
Also, is this the way that we're viewing millennials now, that they're all obsessed with tech, and also so focused on fostering peace and happiness that it's nearly one of their faults? I think somebody's confusing hipsters with hippies, right? I kind of agree with this portrayal, but only up to a point - somebody that focused on changing the world with internet memes and glitter probably wouldn't have found his way into a job at a spy agency in the first place, instead he'd be some kind of YouTube star doing make-up tutorials. Plus, if some tech kid really wanted to work on stealth technology, why not set out to make somebody invisible rather than the more difficult prospect of transforming their whole body into a pigeon, but one that somehow retains human intelligence and the power of speech?
It's the third film in a row where Will Smith faces off against somebody who looks like him, only this time it's not a clone, just a super-villain using some kind of holographic image tech to duplicate his face and frame him for a crime. The IMDB trivia section also points out several overlaps with "Spider-Man: Far From Home", namely the presence of Tom Holland, an African-American super-spy (Lance Sterling/Nick Fury), a battle taking place in Venice, the villain's use of many drones, and a character played by Ben Mendelsohn impersonating that super-spy. Hmmm, and both films produced by companies owned by Disney...
The denouement here is pretty weak, showing both main characters getting fired from the agency because they defied orders - yeah, but they also did that for a reason, so they could save the world! It's a very cheap "all is lost" sort of moment, because the agency heads change their minds five minutes later, creating that "new situation" with the potential for a sequel. Seems to me those two meetings, the firing and the re-hiring, realistically would have been combined into ONE meeting, and they wouldn't have had time to clean out their desks. The agency head is probably very busy, after all. (I really swore that was the voice of Holly Hunter, but it turns out that Reba McEntire sounds almost exactly like her - or maybe watching two films with Holly Hunter just put me in that mind-set.)
I programmed this film a couple of months ago, when it was on iTunes but not yet on cable - so it was very nice of HBO to start running it last Saturday, so I didn't have to spend any extra money to see it on iTunes. Once in a while, something like this works out in my favor when I program ambitiously - and it's why I start tracking movies early, often before they become available, because it takes me a while to link to them anyway, they could become available to me during that period. Now, it would be great if some cable channel could start running "The Call of the Wild" some time in the next, say, 10 days.
Also starring the voices of Tom Holland (last heard in "Onward"), Rashida Jones (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), Ben Mendelsohn (last seen in "The King"), Reba McEntire (last heard in "The Fox and the Hound 2"), Rachel Brosnahan (last seen in "The Finest Hours"), Karen Gillan (last seen in "Avengers: Endgame"), DJ Khaled (last seen in "Bad Boys for Life"), Masi Oka (last seen in "Jobs"), Carla Jimenez (last seen in "Nacho Libre"), Bex Marsh, Stefania Spampinato (last seen in "Ford v Ferrari"), Eddie Mujica, Emily Altman, Claire Crosby, Randy Trager, Matthew J. Munn, Kimberly Brooks (last heard in "The Wild Thornberrys"), Krizia Bajos, Reggie De Leon, Casey Roberts (last heard in "Ice Age: Collision Course"), Jarrett Bruno, So Youn, Jang Min-Hyeok, with a cameo from Mark Ronson (last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall").
RATING: 5 out of 10 glitter bombs
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