The Spy Next Door

There is something strange and irrational about the human psyche that draws us to films that we know are absurd and bad, but in spite of the glaring flaws of such films we get drawn in anyway because the experience is pleasurable. One of those films is "The Spy Next Door." It was obvious to me that "The Spy Next Door" had almost nothing to offer its audience in terms of a plot or even characters that could transcend their stereotypes. These stereotypes include (1) All Russians are evil; (2) the female love interest always finds an implausible reason for dumping Bob Ho (Jackie Chan)before she later reconciles with him; (3) If you want to gain the respect of bullies, you have to beat someone up - preferably an evil Russian who is storming throughout your house looking for a secret formula; (4) If you have Jackie Chan in your film, give him lots of choreographed karate or agile tricks to do; and (5) If you want to win over kids who are not your own, you better be a great action hero. I also realized that this film was trying to get by on Jackie Chan's personality and the characters of the kids.

Yet I did not care because up to a point reliance on the Jackie Chan persona, which this film was clearly doing, actually worked. The reason is that Jackie Chan is a good natured guy, very modest and very nice. It is to an extent amusing watching Chan perform his tricks as he copes with babysitting and then takes on the bad guys. The action scenes were, in my mind, not like the ordinary, overly violent action scenes where the good guy shoots up a bunch of bad guys. They are dance routines, some of them plain silly and others that are pretty good - and you get the impression that even if you are a bad guy you are unlikely to get badly hurt. Jackie Chan himself has often said that he abhors violence and his Bob Ho character is not a violent man. He gets involved in action scenes reluctantly and, even as he wins his little battles, one gets the impression that they were all a lot of fun. Now this is not to say that I can guarantee that you, my readers, are going to like this film. You may dislike it for many sound reasons, but for me "The Spy Next Door" is one of my guilty favorites.