New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Maybe he can return to his awesome animated series

Kim Hollis: The Spy Next Door, a "What if your babysitter were Jackie Chan?" comedy from Lionsgate, opened to $9.7 million during the three-day portion of the weekend. Why was this more like The Medallion than Rush Hour?

Josh Spiegel: Though I am arguably not the target audience, I saw one ad for this movie. One. And it advertised that George Lopez and Billy Ray Cyrus were part of the movie. If anything, the movie also looked like it would make Jackie Chan do what countless other action stars have done: not be action stars and deal with children. I only want to see Jackie Chan do crazy martial arts stuff, not deal with making kids dinner. I don't know how many other people would have wanted to see such a movie.
Jason Lee: If there had been an actual budget behind this film, it would have starred The Rock and been distributed by Disney. Instead we get Chan, who's getting dangerously old for these type of action-comedy pictures, and Lionsgate. To even get close to $10 million is an achievement in my eyes.





George Rose: This is an interesting little genre we've all helped create. You know the one, where former action stars get too old to perform their best stunts in epic summer blockbusters and must resort to family comedies and fart jokes. Aparently this genre has gotten so big that we'll have two of these types of films in one month! This is just one of the reasons The Spy Next Door failed. That genre has always been a joke to begin with, and now Hollywood is sending two of these movies to the cineplex in less than a month? It really shouldn't be such a huge shock that this falls into the weaker performers on Jackie Chans resume. As bad as Rush Hour 3 was, he really should beg his agent to call up Chris Tucker and make a fourth installment. For now, the genre of former-action-star-turned-super-nanny belongs to The Rock, and I expect his Tooth Fairy movie will do much better than this.

Tom Macy: For one, the presence of a Denzel Washington who knows Kung Fu soaked up any martial arts junkies looking for a fix - though action fans never seemed to be the target demographic here. Mr. Chan was just unable to follow in the footsteps of Ice Cube, Vin Diesel and The Rock and cash in on the action star vs. zany kids schtick. The difference may be that unlike those guys, Chan never had much of a tough guy persona, which is key, because when you subvert it it's funny (allegedly). His successes have always been in the light action comedy realm. So this wasn't much of a novelty (not to say The Pacifier is novel, but you get what I mean). Look for The Tooth Fairy bring this mold home next week.

Continued:       1       2       3       4