Not in my wildest nightmares did I ever think I would be writing this review and I hate myself that I know the title of this movie having seen its borderline nonsensical trailer a couple times and thinking to myself, “Wow, what a fun niche release for a few fans of an anime that’s probably been seasons in the making” and “Seems like a lot of references are really just meant for hardcore fans,” so you can imagine how excited I was to watch either a delightful biopic about an Australian family pop band or the early access to Fall Guy during the Screen Unseen this past Monday, when instead I was subjected to the equivalent of Serenity without any knowledge of Firefly (which, I’m going to admit right now is EXACTLY how I saw Serenity the first time and I have no regrets). Aside from saying that it’s borderline rude for your Screen Unseen to be the culmination of a yearslong cartoon spanning multiple seasons, I don’t really have a way of talking about this movie without thinking about it like an uninvited guest at a party I was throwing for Ryan Gosling, Emily Blunt, and a family of pop singers from Australia.
The premise of the movie? Show? Is that a spy (Loid, but surely it’s Lloyd???) for the government of some steampunk nation has gone deep undercover with a random woman and adopted an orphan as a cover for Operation Strix, which, ill-defined as it is, seems to be about getting close to some school administrators who are up to no good running a crime syndicate of some sort. That’s not actually super important to the plot, and also the fact that Loid has to constantly lie to his family about where he is and what he does doesn’t seem to weigh too heavily on his conscience. Meanwhile, his wife Yor, who spends the entirety of the movie insecure about how good a mother and partner she is and not that much time thinking or talking about too much else (except her fight scenes which are the raddest part of this movie), is ALSO living a secret life as an assassin for… unspecified. It’s not clear who she works for or if she’s an independent operator, and unlike her husband who seems to get off pretty easy lying to his wife and then doing spy shit every day, Yor has to ACTUALLY go to a cover job, even though it seems like she really has her hands full raising their weirdly age-regressed daughter Anya, doing a lot of the parenting and household stuff while Loid is fucking about after hours, and I guess in her off hours she gets to kill people? Unclear!
I haven’t got to the weirdest part, which is that Anya is a telepath and despite the fact that she’s an emotionally fragile hyper pixie girl whose animation style is weirdly detached from the rest of the action on screen (headshots to the face, pools of blood, machine guns for arms), she has the emotional maturity to interpret the thoughts of her parents and to keep quiet about it from one another so that the premise of all of their secrets holds up.
Also, their dog (JAMESSSSS) Bond (GET IT GET IT GET IT) can see the future which, fine, who among us wouldn’t want that, but because Anya can read minds SHE CAN READ HIS MIND WHEN HE SEES INTO THE FUTURE WITHOUT THEM COMMUNICATING effectively making her see the future, too, when convenient to the plot. When it’s NOT convenient to the plot, the Bond doesn’t see shit. It’s hard to see how this wouldn’t kickstart an infinite feedback loop where Anya is constantly seeing the future when with Bond, but it seems like his powers are so inconsistent it only presents problems if you think about it too hard. Like, Bond isn’t weirdly zen because he knows someone’s gonna come save them at any given moment, nor is he especially nervous about all the mishaps that will beset the family, because it seems like his visions are the kind of future altering visions that allow for someone to change the future before it happens, which leads me to wonder what are we REALLY seeing when he glitches out if Anya is always acting on the visions she’s seeing? Like, she sees danger and then she averts it, so what was the fucking point of the audience seeing a false future? Is it simply for dramatic effect? But then why have her constantly outsmarting the vision to avoid the outcome? Or why not occasionally have her THINK she’s outsmarted the vision but actually had the bad thing happen in exactly the way predicted? Otherwise wouldn’t you be constantly gaslighting Bond into saying you know better than him?
It’s hard for me to tell what in this movie is shoehorned in, whether its the spy plot or the baking plot or the infidelity plot, but each of the different storylines feels wholly unrelated and at times actively hostile to the development of the other stories. There is, actually, a pretty robust spy plot going on that gets hopelessly bogged down by a vacation sub(/main?)plot in order to find the recipe of the schoolmaster’s favorite dessert so that Anya can win a “Stella,” which will allow her to go to a fancy officer’s event (which never actually comes to fruition in the movie). And for whatever reason, our Big Bad, in order for the tortured plots to all coalesce is also a gourmand who can guess the amount and type of sugar in various desserts. Does it apply in any other scenes besides the ones that have to do with the baking plot? Kind of? Not really? But it’s hard to tell how much of the baking subplot is an in-joke from the fully two seasons of episodes prior to this movie (my guess is none). Which also begs the question why is Yor so worried about her long term but ultimately sham husband’s interest in her and why is it that he can project an air of being completely secure in their relationship despite a complete lack of sexual chemistry? In fact, there IS a scene of sexual chemistry at the very beginning of the movie, when the wife of some rich noble propositions him by spreading her legs apart while seated on a desk in an office, and he doesn’t demure! He caresses her leg before she passes out! Also!
The infidelity plot might actually have been relevant since so much of this movie is in the vein of the Mr and Mrs Smith genre, but Loid actually seems more than happy to gaslight Yor about his relationship with the woman in the white hat, who obviously has some serious feelings for him, which Yor confronts him about! She actually seems like she has good reason to feel insecure about the state of their marriage, because she’s right! He is lying and hiding stuff, Incredibles style! But unlike the Incredibles there is an actual real life coworker who is trying to make the switch happen.
But once the kidnapping occurs, I guess I thought it would be too convoluted for anyone to trace Anya’s kidnappers back to the military, but, no, it’s “barely an inconvenience” to connect the dots through a lucky bite by the family dog and a call to Spy HQ. Which really helps the movie along, because otherwise it’d get stuck as a missing girl subplot, I guess? ALSO, Bond doesn’t even get to be on the steampunk airship for the main action of the movie! How do you not include the future-seeing dog on the airship??? Does he often stay home for the most dangerous parts of the show? Like, I love Anya but pfff that blimp is wayyy too high. It’s like Scooby deciding to sit it out while the gang visits the creepy manor in the mountains.
Also: A lot of the action of the movie happens because they’re looking for cherry liqueur, which in this universe is incredibly rare? And the answer is, I guess, yes! The first cherry liqueur appears to have been created in the 1890s, when a lot of steampunky stuff sort of fits in aesthetically.
And what’s the deal with that “restaurant” that only serves families? What kind of bullshit business model is that? Does that apply to take out as well? What if your husband or wife is running late? Do they refuse to seat you? What if your kid has to leave half way through dinner for a phone call? And then, because it can’t make too much sense, the moment the Spy Family tries to have dinner together, they kick out the dog, because family is only the human family.
I’m sort of losing the thread of this review, but only because there’s so much in this movie that doesn’t feel like it makes any sense. Why is Yor’s brother in two whole scenes of this movie??? He doesn’t do anything! It feels like such a send up to fans but also such a failure of a film and totally unpleasant as an entry point to anything. What set of decisions led anyone to think that this would be a good movie to surprise people with?
Spy x Family: Code White is Spy Kids with more headshots and baking and a looot more poop jokes, which makes it kind of a weird movie on its own, but also almost completely inaccessible to anyone who’s not caught up on the first two seasons, and even maybe then it doesn’t make sense.
