In brief: A bit more cutesy than Kindergarten Cop, but more family-friendly, and Vin Diesel shows his versatility.

Written by Thomas Lennon and Ben Garrant
Directed by Adam Shankman (Bringing Down the House)

---Cast:
Vin Diesel Lt. Shane Wolfe
Tate Donovan Howard Plummer
Lauren Graham Principal Claire Fletcher
Faith Ford Julie Plummer
Brittany Snow Zoe Plummer
Max Thieriot Seth Plummer
Chris Potter Capt. Bill Fawcett
Carol Kane Helga
Brad Garrett Vice Principal Murney
Morgan York Lulu Plummer
Kegan Hoover Peter Plummer (as Keegan Hoover)
Logan Hoover Peter Plummer
Bo & Luke Vink Baby Tyler

I don’t usually attend the screening we do for kids’ movies, but when I first found out about this film, I was very curious to see how Vin Diesel would do in a kid’s film. I’ve liked Vin Diesel ever since Pitch Black, and while some may dismiss him as a muscle-bound action workhorse, I’ve long thought that there was more to him lurking behind that façade, and remembering the skepticism that greeted Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attempts at comedy—skepticism that was greeted with what I thought were successful turns in Twins and Kindergarten Cop, I was curious to see how successfully Diesel would play against type.

The result is a family film more cutesy and farcical than Kindergarten Cop, (the model my mind kept going back to for comparison), with an unfortunately greater focus on infant waste products, but greater conflict between Diesel and his young charges, which lends itself to more heartwarming moments of rapport-building.

Diesel plays Lt. Shane Wolfe, a Navy SEAL assigned to protect the five children of a top scientist (Tate Donovan), and find a hidden computer program that may be secreted in his house while their mother (Faith Ford) and Wolfe’s C.O. journey to Zurich to try and find the right code word for the scientist’s safety deposit box. A simple assignment, it seems, except these kids have issues. Eldest son Seth is defiant, suffers bullying from fellow students and the school’s V.P., and is negligent in his wrestling team responsibilities. Oldest daughter Zoe (American Dreams’s Brittany Snow) is truant in her Driver’s Ed class, and willfully disobedient. The problems of the youngest three, Lulu, Peter, and Tyler, seem simpler, but are no less mountainous for Wolfe, who first tries addressing these problems with the roughshod military discipline he’s accustomed to, but soon finds himself changing tactics by listening to these kids’ problems, and helping them out more as a parent than a military bodyguard. Whereas Schwarzenegger’s character was instantly ingratiated with the object of his protection in Kindergarten Cop by becoming friends and eventually boyfriend to his mom, and merely had to win his class’ attention, here Wolfe has the more difficult task of cutting through the layers of resentment in a pair of teenagers, taking care of an infant and two young children, and protecting them from assassins that come crashing through windows, which lends itself to both some genuinely warm moments when he opens up to Seth and Zoe, and some surprisingly interesting but funny action sequences that seem evocative of Jackie Chan, with a really nice setup-and-payoff when Wolfe realizes the secret to getting to the computer program.

This is obviously a film geared more for the kids, as evidenced by the kooky overacting, the silly Swiss stereotypes (which I didn’t even realized existed), and the goofy actions on the part of the bad guys, such as the revelation, for example, that squirting a juice box into a bad guy’s face is akin to spraying it with acid (and somehow keeps the bad guy from falling backward in response), but while that may be a let-down to the older folk, the parents will probably be pleased, since I recall some parents being upset with the more adult scenes in Kindergarten Cop.

The bottom line is, bring the kids to see it, but if unless you’re a die-hard Diesel fan, and want to see anything he does, it probably won’t be your cup of tea if you’re past grade school.

---NITS & NOTES:
Needless to say, Wolfe should not have left Howard Plummer outside the helicopter in the beginning of the film. This was an act of severe negligence on his part, and one wonders how he got assigned to the job of protecting his kids. It could be surmised that certain powers assigned him that job either as a punishment (the movie’s entry at wikipedia refers to Wofle as “disgraced”), or because they wanted him to screw up, but the movie never makes any mention of this. Even more profound is the lack of communication between Wolfe and the kids over what they might’ve perceived to be his responsibility in what happened to their dad. Even though this is mostly a fluffy kids film, this would’ve lent itself to more meaty-but-kid-friendly aspects of the film’s story and character arcs.

When Wolfe dips Tyler into the toilet during his first attempt at diaper-changing, he doesn’t seem to dip him low enough Tyler’s bottom to touch the water, but somehow he does (if the sound effects I seem to recall) are any indication.

As soon as Wolfe got to the entrance to the place where his locator indicated one of the kids’ tracking devices was, shouldn’t he have immediately realized what was up, rather than going in as far as he did?

As soon as Wolfe found what he first thought was the Ghost program, I immediately thought it was something else, and sure enough, it turned out to be exactly that.

Again, why does squirting a juice box into someone’s face cause them to react in shock as if spraying them in acid?

Even if Wolfe knew that that hatch would hit the bad guy in the back of the head at the end of the movie, he had no way of knowing that his gun would not go off and kill him. He should’ve immediately ducked and/or wrenched the gun out his hand, but didn’t.

But does Vin Diesel have a tumor?

It's not a tumah!

Didn't they already make this movie about a decade ago, only called Mr. Nanny and starring Hulk Hogan? That's the impression I get from the commercials, anyway.

Andre, I deleted your two posts because they contained an antisemitic comment, and because most of their content had nothing to do with this movie. Please keep your posts on-topic, and devoid of bigoted remarks. Thank you.

What, calling someone a big Jew is somehow antisemitic? How, I ask, is that possible?

He's a real jerk! That's all I meant to say!

But hey, this board has standards, and I respect that.

BTW, this movie was terrible, it was the pits, it really stunk!

(There, that's on-topic, hee hee!)

Yes, Andrew, singling out someone's religion or race as a supposedly relevant point when attacking them, is indeed antiSemitic, and offensive. The fact that he's Jewish is irrelevant to whether he is a jerk, and it is for that reason that I removed that comment from your most recent post as well. Please don't do it again.

Moreover, this board is not about Brad Garret or his standup. Please keep it on topic.