It’s probably not surprising to learn that G-Force,
the new 3D half-animated/half-real-life kids movie from Disney and
über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, isn’t very good. It’s noisy,
crude, and nonsensical—none of which is bad in and of
itself—but it’s also insultingly stupid and not nearly funny
enough. I can see it occupying a very young, forgiving child for 90
minutes, but other than loud noises and fast-moving colors in 3D, it
has nothing to offer.
With a weirdly violent ending that seems to be a parody of
Transformers, it seems willfully aimed clear above its target
audience’s head—for example, the characters all spout lines from
’80s movies that today’s tykes have not yet seen: “I feel the need…
the need for speed!” (Top Gun); “Yippee-ki-yay, coffeemaker!”
(Die Hard); “This is my little friend—say hello!”
(Scarface).
A trio of animated guinea pigs (voiced by Sam Rockwell,
Penélope Cruz, and Tracy Morgan) have been trained by Zach
Galifianakis to be special undercover agents. Aided by a mole (voiced
by Nicolas Cage, doing a stereotypical “nerd” voice), they infiltrate
the home of appliance magnate Leonard Saber (Bill Nighy) to uncover his
secret plan to overtake the world, one coffeemaker at a time. But
things go awry, and an FBI suit (Will Arnett, playing it surprisingly
straight) shuts down their project, and the guinea pigs are carted off
to a pet shop. So it’s up to the plucky guinea pigs to escape and prove
themselves. Move over, James Bond… secret agents just got a
lot smaller!
I briefly entertained the notion that perhaps the talking guinea
pigs were a figment of Galifianakis’ imagination, but even that feeble
premise is 800 billion times more clever than what G-Force actually has to offer. Instead, we get fart jokes, headache-inducing 3D
action, a trio of chirpy-voiced mice ripped off directly from
Babe, and a dearth of laughs. (I laughed exactly once, when the
Nicolas Cage mole character had a flashback to his father.) We get
hamster jokes, ferret jokes, rodent jokes galore—although not,
significantly, any gerbil jokes—and a brutal reminder that even
very talented, funny people like Zach Galifianakis, Will Arnett, and
Tracy Morgan need to earn a paycheck from time to time.