Mark Reviews Movies: PLAYING WITH FIRE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | November 8, 2019

Playing with Fire might have worked as a cartoon. Preferably, that cartoon would be short—like, say, as the pilot for an animated television series. In fact, that's exactly what it should have been, because that's certainly the thinking that the filmmakers bring to the movie. Maybe that's just a selfish thought, though. After all, I don't review TV shows.

Instead, we get a feature-length movie that has real people doing really dumb things for laughs. There's a certain kind of dumb comedy that works, because the filmmakers are smart enough to know the material is dumb and play it from that angle. Then, there's material like this, in which everyone just kind of flails around for no rational or even particular reason—except in the desperation that someone, somewhere, will find it funny.

The cast probably should have known better. Here, we have John Cena playing the tough and emotionally constipated leader of a team of smokejumpers—a special kind of firefighter, who tackles blazes in wildlands by parachuting into the scene. The characters, such as Cena's Jake Carson, make a big deal of the fact that they're the best of the best of an exclusive group of people. There are thousands of firefighters across the country, but there are only a few more than 300 smokejumpers.

Of all the jobs that screenwriters Dan Ewen and Matt Lieberman could have selected for this plug-and-play story, they might have stumbled across the correct one. If that number of smokejumpers is accurate, the odds are significantly decreased that the screenwriters, director Andy Fickman, or the studio will get angry letters or emails about how much of an embarrassment this movie is to their work.

As for the cast, Cena recently has proven himself to be a surprisingly effective comedic actor, especially in smaller roles. Here, well, he probably should have kept looking for a different starring role in a comedy. It's not his first, of course, but it'll take some work to ensure that it isn't his last.

To be fair, he doesn't have much to work with, except to play tough and deadpan while hinting at a gooey emotional core to the character. It's not him. It's the jokes.

It's also not Keegan-Michael Key, John Leguizamo, or Tyler Mane, who play members of Jake's team of smokejumpers. Key plays Mark, whose sole purpose here is to pop into frame, right next to Jake, at any given moment without warning. That's the joke. Leguizamo plays Rodrigo, who likes to cook with a certain canned pork product and was in prison, which is one of the few jokes for the adults in the audience, because the kids won't get it. That's kind of a joke, I guess. Mane plays Axe, who is silent (except later, when it's revealed he sings like an opera tenor) and carries around—you guessed it—an axe. Ha.

The plot revolves around the team rescuing a trio of kids from a cabin that has caught fire. Brynn (Brianna Hildebrand), the eldest, says that their parents are away for the night, so legally, the guys have to watch over her, brother Will (Christian Convery), and toddler sister Zoey (Finley Rose). The central joke is that the mere presence of the kids turns these brave and death-defying men into whiny, sniveling, terrified, incompetent, and frustrated babysitters.

They whine. Mark becomes deeply, outrageously offended at any sign of sarcasm from the teenage Brynn. They snivel. Jake has to deal with Zoey's "boom-boom," which splatters across his facemask after he wraps up the girl with a shirt. There's another such—although much more uncomfortable—scene that turns the tables, as Jake has to make his own "boom-boom" in the woods while holding Zoey, who won't stop staring at him.

All of the gags are played to the balcony by the cast. Fickman really doesn't help by keeping his camera moving—zooming into faces at Dutch angles—and, if the copious number of random insert shots are any indication, by apparently piecing together gags at the last minute in the editing room.

Do we discover some secret about the kids that suggests they might have a family right in front of them, while Jake learns that there's much more to life than work? You can bet on it. Playing with Fire at least has this much going for it: For as sappy as the movie inevitably becomes, it provides some reprieve from the movie's complete failure as comedy.

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