SPIES IN DISGUISE (2019)
Tagline: ...are saving the world on the fly.
(Action, Animation, Adventure) [PG]
Would you look at that? There's a man with a robot hand wearing your face who took the M9 Assassin. Guess I owe you an apology.
This movie is from Blue Sky Studios which is pretty hit and miss. When they hit, it’s pretty great and for a lot of people their biggest hit was FIGHT CLUB, but when it comes to animation it’s probably RIO. This was one of 5 movies we were considering checking out on Christmas 2019 but ended up missing our 4 movie jaunt that day. I didn’t get a chance to see it till recently but I thought the premise for this thing was pretty intriguing, so here we go.
In this one, a super 007 type spy named Lance Sterling (voiced by Will Smith) is one of the best there is. At some point, he pissed off the wrong supervillain because this guy has the ability to look just like Sterling. He uses that ability to frame Sterling who is now on the run. He ends up going to Walter (voiced by Tom Holland) who has just been let go from the spy agency by Sterling. They need to settle their differences in order to take on a new super menace hell-bent on destroying the spy agency and everyone in it.
The good – One thing I really liked about this movie was the animation. The character design wasn’t really my thing, but the animation overall was solid and the design work on everything but the characters was extremely solid. Storyline wise most of this movie was pretty good and the action sequences for the most part are awesome. I have seen some complaints about Will Smith’s character being a pigeon most of the movie, but he is a human a lot of the time as well. Perhaps it would have been better if both Will Smith’s character and Tom Holland’s character both turned into Pigeons or even just Tom Holland. I don’t know. For me, this was actually a strong point of the movie. Just because after seeing the previews I was impressed with how much we got a Lance Sterling that was an awesome human spy. For the record, Will Smith also voiced a rainbow tropical fish in SHARK TALE and was never human in that.
The Bad – I really didn’t like the ending of this thing. It kind of undermines how epic Sterling is and replaces an incredible but rude and arrogant spy with the weapons of Walter. Some of Walters's ideas were really cool, but others were mindlessly funny but not something you would use on a supervillain. It kind of cheapens an otherwise fun and entertaining spy flick. I also was NOT crazy about Reba McEntire voicing “Joyless”, the main director of the spy's voice. This was just a pretty odd choice from my perspective as was hiring Karen Gillan to be in your movie but keeping her dialog down to seemingly less than a minute. The pacing and dialog were a bit off as well.
Overall I have to say I liked this movie and would watch it again, but wouldn’t buy it. It does feel a bit like BIG HERO SIX only instead of a group of kids, the main villain is fighting one kid and an adult. SPIES IN DISGUISE gets a 4 out of 7.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF BLUE SKY STUDIOS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.
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