Guinea pig action flick 'G-Force' deserves an F
The hits just keep getting dumber.
Walt Disney's partially computer-animated "G-Force," created by action-film mogul Jerry Bruckheimer's production company, barely qualifies as a dumbed-down Saturday morning cartoon show on cinematic, 3-D steroids.
No thought of any character goes unvoiced.
No action occurs without a character explaining it.
Every idea gets cut up into little passive chunks and served to children - presumably the target audience for this noisy collection of surprisingly dingy, 3-D action sequences - so they're spoon-fed every detail and never required to use their brains.
The plot is literally a plot to take over the world.
The always-ticky Bill Nighy plays Saber, a businessman who intends to achieve global domination by turning his company's appliances, sold all over the world, into diabolic killing machines equipped with laser guns and high-speed buzz saws.
A U.S. government employee named Ben (Zach Galifianakis) and his cute assistant Marcie (Kelli Garner) have secretly trained three guinea pigs - Darwin (Sam Rockwell), Blaster (Tracy Morgan) and Juarez (Penelope Cruz) - to conduct spy missions and speak through the use of a computer chip. (The dogs in Disney's "Up" apparently had access to the same technology.)
One of those typical Hollywood screaming supervisors shows up in the person of Agent Killian (Will Arnett), and he's shocked that Ben has run rogue missions to discover Saber's plot. Ben shows him the trained, talking guinea pigs, and tells him that he can make surveillance agents out of cockroaches.
What does Agent Killian say to that? "I'm shutting you down!" he screeches.
What? He's not impressed with talking animals? This is like Jason Lee discovering three talking chipmunks ransacking his kitchen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks." Is he impressed? Nope. He throws them out of his house and tells them never to come back. (Apparently, writing for semianimated comedies turns off the internal-logic button in screenwriters' heads.)
Darwin, Blaster and Juarez get guidance from a techno-mole named Speckles (Nicolas Cage), reconnaissance information from Mooch the housefly (Dee Bradley Baker) and assistance from Hurley (Jon Favreau), a bushy-haired guinea pig with toxic flatulence problems. (Always a big hit with the kiddies.)
Juarez, hardly a role model for girls, pretends to like one guinea pig to get the other to like her, but is never honest with any of them about her true feelings.
"Men are like savings bonds," she giggles. "They take way too long to mature." We can only hope she meant to say male guinea pigs.
"G-Force" is the feature debut of director Hoyt Yeatman, who previously provided special effects for such films as "Underdog," "Kangaroo Jack" and "Mighty Joe Young."
As you might expect, "G-force" is strong on special effects - Yeatman's comfort zone - and woefully weak on drama and characters and convincing emotions.
He receives minimal help from screenwriters Cormac and Marianne Wibberly, who must have been paid by the cliché when they banged out this simple-minded script.
A sample of their dialogue:
"We need to get out of here!" Juarez shouts.
"We gotta get out of here!" Bucky shouts.
"Let's get out of here!" Darwin shouts.
"Let's go!" Darwin shouts.
"I gotta go!" Darwin shouts.
"Go! Go! Go! Go!" Darwin and Killian both shout.
I guess the "G" in "G-Force" stands for "Grating."
"G-Force"
Rating: 1½ stars
Starring: Voiced by Nicolas Cage, Penelope Cruz, Sam Rockwell, Steve Buscemi, Tracy Morgan
Directed by: Hoyt Yeatman
Other: A Walt Disney Pictures release. Rated PG. 88 minutes.