Movie Review: G-Force

Stars: 2 out of 5
Pros: A few funny lines and moments...

Cons: ...that weren't enough to make up for the rest of the poor movie.

The Bottom Line:

Don't spend your money

To see the few fun moments

Free is the right price

"Dogs!  Why Does It Have to be Dogs!"

I never could quite tell if I would enjoy G-Force or not.  The previews were funny, but it also looked like it could be stupid.  But my roommate really wanted to see it, and since he suffered through Shorts with me, I figured what the heck.  There were some funny bits, but it delivered more on the stupid than it did the funny.

Ben (Zach Galifianakis) has spent his life working with rodents.  And it's paid off.  This FBI scientist has figure out a way to communicate with them and train them to go on covert missions.  But his funding is about to be taken away.  As a last second hail Mary, he sends out his crack team, consisting of a fly, three guinea pigs, and a mole, to infiltrate a house and get a file off a computer.

The mission is a big success, or so it appears.  The next day, at the review, things go horribly wrong and the project is shut down.  The rodents manage to escape to a pet store, but the FBI wants them to keep the entire project completely secret.  Can the rodents escape and foil the plot they've uncovered?  Or will the FBI track them down first?

Okay, so I didn't go into this movie expecting a wild, new plot.  And that's a good thing.  The movie was full of cliches from start to finish.  Of course, that's never an automatic negative in my book.  It all depends on how they are played out.

At this point, I will point out there was one plot twist that did take me by surprise.  That's all I will say here.

The problem is this movie really didn't do anything with the premise.  There were lots of jokes and pop culture references, but they seemed to be thrown in to distract us from the slow moving story.  The characters were also pretty ordinary.  I can get beyond a boring story if I care about the characters, but there wasn't enough here to make me care about them.  Most of the big revelations came as no surprise to me.

Heck, I'm even going to pick on the writing here.  Here's a tip for the writers as they work on their next movie.  If you are going to have a recycled plot, at least give us writing that isn't as trite and boring.

Honestly, I feel sorry for the human actors in this film.  They are just there to be window dressing for the computer animated critters.  That's not a knock on them at all.  Everyone does a good job making us believe this world.  Well, as good a job as they can considering they've got poor dialogue to recite.  The biggest names in the cast were reserved for the computer animated characters.  We had such actors as Nicholas Cage, Sam Rockwell, Jon Favreau, and Penelope Cruz involved with this part of the movie, and they all did fine.

I've got to give this movie credit for the effects.  I never for a moment doubted that these animals were really talking or doing all the things the plot called for them to do.  I didn't get to see it in 3 D, but I have a feeling a couple of those shots would have been incredible.

And, yes, I will admit I laughed a few times.  Some of the lines were absolutely funny.  The three mice we meet in the pet shop stole the show.  I think I would have enjoyed it more if they had been in more of the movie.  I was also impressed that they kept the poop and fart jokes lower than I thought they would based on their prevalence in the previews.  I also must confess that my roommate and a friend I saw this with laughed quite a bit more than I did.

I am a little surprised that G-Force did so well at the box office.  I wonder if it had more to do with the lack of quality movies out this summer than with how good it really turned out to be.