Mark Reviews Movies: SECRET HEADQUARTERS

Secret Headquarters, Paramount+

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 11, 2022

Superheroes once were a source of fun fantasy and wish-fulfillment for kids, but more modern iterations of those characters, especially the ones found in the most popular and ubiquitous so-called cinematic universe, seem set on transforming them from heroes to soldiers of sorts. The militarization of these characters has spread, apparently, so we now have Secret Headquarters. In it, a bunch of kids find themselves in a superhero's underground lair, filled with tools and weapons of an alien origin, and fighting a paramilitary force, which has no qualms harming kids and threatening to murder them with all kinds of guns.

This is still the stuff of fantasy and wish-fulfillment. It's difficult to view it as "fun" in any sense of the word.

One does wonder what the thinking is on the part of the screenwriters—co-directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, as well as Josh Koenigsberg. This is clearly intended to be a movie aimed at an audience the same age as its young heroes, so the tone is mostly jovial and occasionally silly. That often doesn't sit right, especially when the goons of a defense company start pointing pistols at the kids and promise to kill them where they stand and have their bullets be transported from the lair to the kids' school.

Joost and Schulman are wise enough to keep most of the thugs and all of the guns off the property when the story's climax arrives at a dance being held in the school's gymnasium. That decision, though, only affirms the filmmakers realize there's an obvious issue with the very premise of their tale. There's clearly a line they won't cross, but it almost feels irrelevant by the time the movie reaches that point. What of that initial line of putting kids in such obvious and continuous peril involving firearms, which the movie so gleefully crosses in the first act?

If one can look past that (There's an argument to be made that the real world and modern superhero fare has made gun violence commonplace and not worth a second thought for the kids in the audience, and there's a better case to be made that, while that might be true, it's damn depressing we're at that point), the movie is mostly mediocre and fairly familiar. A prologue introduces us to a family of three on a camping trip. When a fighter jet crashes while tracking an unidentified aerial phenomenon, Jack (Owen Wilson), the father of the little clan, jumps in his hippy-style van to help. He finds Irons (Jesse Williams), the jet's pilot, and a downed UFO, which sends a glowing orb Jack's way.

A few years later, Jack is continually absent from the life of his son Charlie (Walker Scobell), who lives with his mother (played by Jessie Mueller). On the weekend of his birthday, Charlie goes to his dad's remote cabin, but when Jack is once again called away for a work obligation, Charlie calls up his best friend Berger (Keith L. Williams), who invites classmates Maya (Momona Tamada)—on whom Charlie has a crush—and Lizzie (Abby James Witherspoon), to hang out and party. They find a secret elevator, which leads the kids to the subterranean headquarters of the superhero known as the Guard—and the realization that Charlie's dad is that superhero.

Playing with the Guard's gadgets (a jetpack, a pair of teleportation portals, a bracelet that becomes a blaster, etc.) alerts Argon (Michael Peña), the CEO of a military company that's losing money because of the relative peace and security the Guard has brought to the world. He rounds up some mercenaries, including Irons, to steal the best of the tools/weapons and put the Guard's operation out of commission.

The rest of the plot features a lot of standoffs and fights—again, involving these kids being knocked around and shot at by adults, while Charlie and his friends also get to use their smarts and this alien technology to inflict some pain of their own (There's a weird moment when Charlie suggests Berger should torture Argon for information, and the unsettling thing is that the pre-teen actually does). The look of it all is murky and gray, perhaps to cover up some visual effects that lack, although the aesthetic puts an additional damper on the attempted humor. It certainly emphasizes, though, just how grim and unpleasant the dynamics and execution of the central conflict actually are.

In theory, Secret Headquarters should be some harmless, if wholly unoriginal, fun that gives the kids on screen—and, by extension, off it—the chance to see themselves as the superheroes they admire. There's an underlying thematic and practical ugliness to the approach, though, that prevents the movie from being either harmless or fun.

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