REVIEW: Blue Sky’s “Spies In Disguise”

REVIEW: Blue Sky’s “Spies In Disguise”

December 30th, 2019

Martin Goodman

If you have seen the trailer or commercials for Blue Sky Animation’s latest film, you know everything you need to know: A super-suave spy is turned into a pigeon by a nerdy kid who works for the same government agency. They team up to take down a bad guy and foil his nefarious plot. That’s it. Before you attend the film, you know that the pigeon will not end up fricasseed, that there is more to this nerdy kid than you think, and that the nefarious plot will, of course, be dutifully foiled. The focus for the critic becomes, how does the film get there, and how well does it accomplish its goals along the way? In the case of Spies in Disguise, the answer is: fairly well.

The movie opens with little Walter Beckett (Tom Holland) showing off his dubious science skills to his mom. The next scene, set fourteen years after the first one, introduces us to master spy Lance Sterling (Will Smith), whose amazing feats of derring-do are not quite enough to seize a stolen government killer drone from the clutches of evil arms dealer Killian (Ben Medelsohn). Good intro for both characters, who are now working for a secret government agency called H.T.U.V. (Honor, Trust, Unity, Value).

Beckett works on spy gadgets, but his creations are more fit for novelty stores than Bondian adventures. Sterling is framed for the theft of the drone and is forced into an alliance with Beckett when Marcy Kappel (Reshida Jones) and her team hunt him down for treason. Sterling accidentally ingests Beckett’s experimental DNA formula, transforming him into a pigeon.

Killian is after a portable database containing the identities of all H.T.U.V. personnel; he can then unleash an army of killer “M9 Assassin” drones and wipe them out. The unlikely (and reluctant) team of Starling and Beckett must find Killian, rescue the database, disarm the drones, evade Kappel and company, and clear Sterling’s name. Not easy tasks for a pigeon and a gawky young adult (even if he did graduate from M.I.T at age 15). At the heart of their relationship is a serious question: must violence and black-and-white morality be the only path to achieving “good” or “right”? Can there be another way?

Blue Sky now has the resources of Disney at its fingers, and the animation is as good as you would expect it to be: look to the backgrounds and SFX to prove the point. The characters are cartoony caricatures, but this film is part comedy. I especially liked the design of Lance Sterling, slim, sharp, and tailored. I kept wanting to fix him up on a date with Mirage from The Incredibles. Once again, the migration of designers and artists from one studio to another makes the visual style indistinguishable from many other animated films of late; If you did not know that this was a Blue Sky film, you could be forgiven from attributing it to Illumination, Sony, or virtually any other major studio outside of Pixar or Disney.

Everyone pretty much knows what to expect from Will Smith, and he does not disappoint. The best work, however, belongs to Tom Holland as Walter Beckett. Holland mixes boyish enthusiasm with young adult sincerity in a truly masterful way. If he never does another turn as Spider-Man, he will be remembered for this film as well. Ben Mendelsohn does a nice turn as Killian, and I would be amiss in not mentioning the hilarious work of voice artist Masi Oka as Katsu, Kamura, a crooked associate of Killian’s. Rashida Jones is spunky and serviceable as H.T.U.V. bloodhound Marcy Kappel.

The last third of the movie is a wild, fast-paced parody of every spy movie chase, gadget, and showdown ever filmed (including the villain who talks too much). Every major character is involved, and the camera work is dizzying at times. The finale is great in a technical sense, but it also highlights the movie’s weakness; it unfolds very much the way you would expect. The screenplay by Brad Copeland and Lloyd Taylor unfolds in the perfect rhythm of an MFA-crafted work; The rises and falls, the plot and pinch points, the Dark Moment and the Reversal of Fortune are all uncannily where they should be, and so are the events in the finale. Nothing is a surprise.

However, first-time directors Troy Quane and Nick Bruno are quite competent in working within that framework. They trot the story through many entertaining scenes as if it were a well-trained horse. There is an admirable sense of understanding what an animated film should offer in 2019, even if that has not been a very high bar. I would love to see what Quane and Bruno could do with a film that does not depend so heavily on structure; perhaps in time, we will.

Spies in Disguise is drawing some praise for its message of using non-violent methods to solve problems. And I applaud it for presenting that angle instead of repeatedly preaching (like many animated films this year) that every kid is unique and special, every kid is wonderfully different, and that every kid is super-OK for just being themselves. Heck, even a pigeon already knows that by now.