foxofmanytales

[foxofmanytales]

Spies in Disguise: Blue Sky’s Latest Dump Into a Stagnant Gene Pool

As we move further toward the middle of the holiday season, Blue Sky, the studio who brought you such classics as 𝘏𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘰𝘯 𝘏𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘴 𝘢 𝘞𝘩𝘰 and 𝘍𝘦𝘳𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘯𝘥 has announced what will doubtlessly be yet another 𝘔𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘱𝘪𝘦𝘤𝘦. Spies in Disguise is an upcoming animated children’s action comedy set to release on September 13, 2019 (US), and 𝘣𝘰𝘺 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 𝘵𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵. If you haven’t had the pleasure of watching the trailer yet, I highly encourage you to do so. Within the first thirty seconds, we are treated to not one, but two instances of the exact same catchphrase, delivered in the exact same manner with the exact same pose in the exact same environment- a bad omen. As the trailer continues, we are exposed to shot after shot of pointless action scenes accompanied by stale, unoriginal music and stilted, poorly choreographed fighting (I want to draw attention the the face that Blue Sky could not choreograph a fight scene in an animated movie), all of this telling us absolutely nothing about the movie that this trailer is supposedly getting us hyped for. Finally, as if one final strike to the cranium, our main character (who, I might add, has one of the most terrifying faces I’ve ever seen in anything ever and has a body that would make a scarecrow blush) is turned into a pigeon by the token nerd in the film, who is also not given any attention by, again, what is supposed to be a showcase for the upcoming movie. We are given a few more gags, and then the trailer ends.

So what do we think about the movie so far? Well, if the trailer is anything to go on, this movie is going to have zero real plot, shallow characters, and lots and lots of cheap gags. Now I’ll give it some points for making me smile at “I can’t not look at you”, but that’s all this trailer is going to get from me. Am I nitpicking, though? I’ve only tackled some minor things that might or might not make their way into the movie, and being a trailer for an action comedy, it gave us action and a couple of jokes, so what’s the problem? The problem, friends, is that; one, a good action comedy is not ONLY action and comedy, you need good characters so that the action is suspenseful and the comedy is relatable and genuine, and two, even the action and comedy that we were given fell flat on its face, as the action scenes are not fluidly animated and feel very jerky, and the comedy is dry and contrived, and I doubt even the children watching this movie will find it remotely funny after the first fifteen minutes. If I had to recommend seeing this movie based on the trailer alone (and in all fairness, the movie hasn’t released yet), I would say that the one funny joke at the end gives me some hope, but not much. I don’t think it will be anything like the dumpster fire that was Epic, but go out and watch it when it releases if you consider yourself open minded, and don’t expect a real work of art.