Mark Reviews Movies: SPIES IN DISGUISE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 24, 2019

The central plot conceit of Spies in Disguise is so strange—to the point that it's almost absurd—that one has to admire it. The movie begins as a conventional, albeit computer-animated and slightly more child-friendly, spy thriller, with a world-famous master of espionage seeking a super weapon from a villain at a heavily-guarded headquarters.

You know you're the best, our heroic spy announces, when everyone knows your name. That's true, perhaps, in general, although that seems counter-productive in his line of work. If everyone knows a spy's name, that means he or she has failed quite spectacularly in at least one of the key requirements of the job.

That's kind of the joke about Lance Sterling (voice of Will Smith), who is quite exceptional at fighting and using gadgets to accomplish his missions and to get out of hairy situations. He's also a bit of an egomaniac, who wants to people to know his name and his deeds.

When he returns to the office, an underground headquarters beneath the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, everyone applauds Lance's entrance. "It's too much," he tells his co-workers, who stop clapping. The momentary absence of praise, though, is too much for him. "It's probably the right amount," he jokes, with the same degree of fake humility that got them to stop cheering in the first place.

Smartly, the movie quickly and repeatedly puts this character's ego to the test. From the opening action sequence, Lance is clearly a man who holds individual action—specifically, his own—above everything else. Those actions have to be spectacular, too, so when one gadget explodes in glitter and not flames, he's quite distraught at the lack of a big boom to punctuate his heroics.

When Lance returns with the briefcase that's supposed to house the top-secret weapon, he's even more distraught to learn that it's empty. That never happens. That shouldn't happen. That can't happen to the best spy on the planet. It did happen, though, because Lance was so distracted by fulfilling his need to be the best spy that he forgot to check if he had actually done the work.

That's the starting point of the plot, which has Lance trying to recover the weapon (It actually reveals the identities of the organization's agents around the world, which seems to have become the go-to MacGuffin of contemporary spy movies). He has to find it, even as his agency believes that he has stolen it, thanks to a face-shifting villain named Killian (voice of Ben Mendelsohn), who wants revenge against Lance for one of the spy's previous, extremely violent missions.

There's nothing special about this plot, and it's kind of a shame that screenwriters Brad Copeland and Lloyd Taylor rely on it so much for what follows. That is, of course, a necessity of such stories, so it's mostly forgivable.

It's even more tempting to forgive it when the movie's central gimmick arrives. With the agency after Lance, he needs the help of Walter Beckett (voice of Tom Holland), a tech expert who's the laughingstock of the agency. The answer might be a concoction of Walter's design that can turn a person invisible.

What Lance doesn't know is that Walter was speaking metaphorically when he mentioned the invention. It's actually a potion that turns a person into a pigeon, which are so common that a pigeon is essentially invisible. Lance only learns that after he has drunk a whole beaker of the liquid in one gulp.

The rest of the story has the master spy, now a pigeon, continuing on his search for the weapon and the mission to clear his name. The concept is so ridiculous that it's endearing, and the movie gets plenty of gags about pigeon physiology, Lance's incompetence at being a bird, and a few fellow-pigeon sidekicks out of the deal. Directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane juggle the humor and the plot necessities well enough, as the pigeon version of Lance and Walter travel to assorted locations, looking for clue after clue.

The heart of the movie, though, is a bit more thoughtful, which means that the filmmakers have a difficult time exploring it, what with all the gags and plot mechanics with which to deal. Walter is a pacifist, who believes there are alternatives to violence, even against the most dastardly of villains and in the face of the most dangerous scenarios. That aforementioned glitter bomb, which forms the face of a cute cat and makes its targets distracted by pure happiness, was his idea. Lance is of a mind that, in this world, sometimes only an actual explosion can get the job finished.

The debate between these characters is well-intentioned, although misguided in a plot that relies so heavily on the clichés, mechanics, and constant action of modern-day spy shenanigans. Violence, whether the filmmakers want it to be or not, is a driving force of this story. More effective, though, is how Lance learns genuine humility and teamwork, after discovering that his bird body is essentially useless in allowing him to do what he does best.

Spies in Disguise has a heart and a mind, which is surprising, considering how weird its central gimmick is. When you've hit upon something this odd, though, maybe it's better to leave the heart, the mind, and the plot as an afterthought.

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