BEFORE: OK, I sort of see what this week wants to be now - two films about contact sports (boxing & MMA), two films about superheroes, two sci-fi films with aliens in them, and, umm, two other films with Halle Berry as traumatized women (one famous, the other not so much). Wait, that adds up to eight films in a week, I guess I'm counting both Saturdays this way. Well, it's a mixed bag of stuff, no matter how you slice it. That's typical for August, where summer blockbusters meet biopics, sci-fi meets sports, and I'm clearing house by watching whatever's going to get me to Labor Day and/or the start of Halloween month.
Next week looks like another mixed bag, but then the week after that is like ALL sci-fi and fantasy (but it's a short week) and then after that, a little bit of everything until Sept. 1 - sci-fi, weird sports, another bio-pic, another bio-pic and a few indie dramas. I'm really looking forward to the full theme month in October, it tends to be less confusing, but more spooky at the same time.
Michael Peña carries over from "Moonfall".
THE PLOT: While hanging out after school, Charlie and his friends discover the headquarters of the world's most powerful superhero hidden beneath his father's home. When villains attack, they must team up to defend the headquarters and save the world.
AFTER: Damn, I wish I'd known this was going to be a "kids" movie, I would have considered skipping it. I've never watched the "Spy Kids" movies, and there's a reason - though who knows, maybe I'd like those, as long as they aim a bit higher than this one did. Like this one feels like it was made for the Disney Channel, and I don't mean that as a compliment. I used to see promos for superhero shows on Disney, like "The Thundermans" and "LabRats" and "Mighty Med" and they just all looked bloody awful. I'd never let my kids watch shows I found to be stupid, but maybe all kids shows look a bit stupid to adults. Worse, the acting was always so over-the-top that I couldn't believe anything any of the characters said - so I curse all the acting coaches working over there at Disney who've trained all child actors to over-emote. It always seems like every character played by a kid is constantly exasperated and talking much too fast. Like, you kids are at a "10" and I need you to be at a "2".
What's worse, this film isn't even really about the main superhero, The Guard. We see him get his powers in the opening scenes of the film, and then he's called away to do superhero stuff for most of the film, and we see him again in the last 15 minutes of the film. Jeez, Owen Wilson is front and center on the poster, but he's barely in the film, and HE'S THE STAR! instead the movie focuses on his neglected son and his son's friends as they accidentally discover the secret headquarters far below his house, and all the cool gadgets there. Naturally the kids take some of the gadgets out of the HQ and try to win junior high (?) with them, but that's not really playing fair, is it? Do we want to send the message to our kids that's it's OK to use high-tech gadgets to cheat on tests, cheat at baseball and drive before they are of legal age? Wow, that all sounds really bad, and it is.
Look, I get Jack SEEMS like a neglectful father, but whenever he claims he has to go to "work", he's really saving lives around the world, only he hasn't confided in his son that he doesn't have an office job, but he's a superhero who got his hero suit and power source from an alien spaceship. They never say it outright, but it feels like either being a superhero broke up Jack's marriage, or else he chose to isolate himself from his wife and son for their own protection. Or maybe he's just too busy to spend time with them, and he is really a dick about it, it's tough to say. But surely there must be some superheroes who can balance work and family, like, umm, well there's Hawkeye, he had a wife and kids in the MCU, just not in the comics. Superman's got Lois Lane and has a teenage son in the most recent comics incarnation, two sons in the latest TV show.
Yeah, but that's about it. I can't name another major superhero with a long-term relationship AND kids. Spider-Man was married for a while and I think there was a baby, but the next writer retconned all that away. Batman? One son who was the 4th or 5th Robin, but he's not married to the baby mama, and the recent planned wedding to Catwoman got called off. Scarlet Witch and Vision couldn't make it work in either comics or TV, I guess a witch and a robot are just too different to get along. Really, I blame the comic-book writers, who choose to keep their hero characters eternally single, because it's just easier to write them that way, they can focus more on their heroic deeds than their private lives, plus your average comic book writer probably knows very little about relationships. Just saying. Captain America, Iron Man, She-Hulk, they've all had long-term relationships but have avoided being tied down - gotta keep those options open.
But it doesn't HAVE to be this way, there's nothing that says a superhero can't be married, but I guess the main audience is still kids, and they may not understand the repercussions of long-term relationships. Plus when you do see Wolverine or Deadpool or Daredevil get married in the comics, you just know the next writer's going to kill off the spouse, you can practically set your watch by it. So maybe "Secret Headquarters" is referencing this fact, or perhaps I'm over-thinking it, like I tend to do with everything.
Anyway, once the kids learn that Charlie's dad is The Guard, they take a bunch of the high-tech gadgets to school and they also go for a ride in the battle van. Umm, HOW is this a good idea? They go WAY over the speed limit, and in doing so they alert The Guard's enemies to the location of his headquarters, and that means a visit from some very BAD people, one of whom feels that HE should have been given the super-powers from the spaceship, not Jack. Ugh, then this film basically turns into "Home Alone: Superhero Edition" as the kids try to use the gadgets to defeat the tech businessman (Luthor-type) who leads the excursion into the secret headquarters.
What's worse is that when The Guard finally gets back, and not.a moment too soon, the bad guys start the timers on all the explosives they've placed around the HQ, and the kids and The Guard have to evacuate and take the fight to school, and wouldn't you know it, it's the night of the big school dance. And I actually didn't see the ending because my DVR didn't record the last 10 minutes of the film, but you know, I can probably guess what happens. Good wins over evil because it's nicer, and Jack vows to be a better father now that his son knows his secret. I will watch the last 10 minutes tonight, just to confirm, but it's probably not necessary.
I just think there were probably better ways to get from the beginning of this film to the end, that's all - without so much silly kids-playing-with-gadgets stuff in between. Seeing these kids acting out gets tiresome very, very quickly. It also reminds me of all the goofy gadgets seen in "The Goonies", and those just never really looked like they would work in real life. There is a through-line from "Moonfall", however, as that film had a central character whose marriage broke up because he was an astronaut, and his relationship with his son was damaged. Same thing tonight, only the cause is being a superhero - sure, because it couldn't possibly be the father's fault, in either case, so by all means, blame their jobs.
Also starring Owen Wilson (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"), Walker Scobell (last seen in "The Adam Project"), Jesse Williams (last seen in "The Cabin in the Woods"), Keith L. Williams (last seen in "Good Boys"), Momona Tamada, Charles Melton (last seen in "Bad Boys for Life"), Abby James Witherspoon (last seen in "Hot Pursuit"), Kezii Curtis (last seen in "Dolemite Is My Name"), Jessie Mueller (last seen in "Adrienne"), Dustin Ingram (last seen in "Sky High"), Levy Tran (last seen in "The First Purge"), Michael Anthony, Dayna Beilenson (last seen in "The Mule"), David Lengel (last seen in "Shazam! Fury of the Gods"), Forrest Deal, DK Metcalf, Lav Luv, Aiden Malik (last seen in "The Florida Project"), Lucius Baston (last seen in "The Best of Enemies"), Mick Daily, Ninja N. Devoe (last seen in "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks"), Louie Chaplin Moss, Labrandon Shead (last seen in "Triple 9"), Constance McCracklin.
RATING: 4 out of 10 Nintendo Switch games
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