Directed by: Adam Shankman
Genres: Comedy, Action, Family, Thriller
Cast: Vin Diesel, Lauren Graham, Faith Ford, Brittany Snow, Max Thieriot, Chris Potter, Carol Kane, Brad Garrett, Morgan York, Kegan Hoover, Logan Hoover, Bo Vink, Luke Vink, Tate Donovan, Scott Thompson
IMDB raintg: 5.0
My rating: 6.0 [rate 6.0]
Guess what – Vin Diesel didn’t blend in nicely. It was awkward and wierd to see him in this film. He did a good job, but he wasn’t supposed to be in there.
Overall, the film was good. It was better than I expected. But it was slow coming too. It was starting and starting and starting and starting. Good ten minutes into a film I was still trying to figure out if this will be a comedy or a family flick. It turned out to be a mix, but it needed a long time before it got me laughing.
You know, there was all the common stuff that is usually shown in a unexperienced baby sitter movies. Everything from diper changing to driving lessons through the change of discipline. Oh, wait a second there. I think they forgot the feeding part. Yeah, that’s right. Vin didn’t feed any of the kids during the whole course of the film. There are some lost opportunities over there.
Anyway, as I was wathing it a few jokes were thrown here and there, but nothing that would even get me smiling. Some good, some bad, some old, but the density was small. And than it comes… it was so unpredictable, major and funny that it was worth all the movie – the fairy tale about elves and gnomes. I was crying laughing. Seriously.
Actually, it was expected. A fairy tale from a new nanny is a usual thingy in the baby sitting movies. But usually they would go around making lots of fuzz about it. Like the kid won’t go to sleep until he hears the fairy tale or something like this. And this position was already occupied by another kid and some stupid Peter Pen dance… Still funny. Even considering the fact that the mixture was somewhat usual. You see, the unexperienced baby sitters usually make their fairy tales up. And they just take some situation from their life and tell it as a fairy tale. I’ve heard lawyers’ fairy tales, doctors’ fairy tales, drivers’ fairy tales, and some. But Vin is playing a Special Operations soldier, so he had to tell a military joke. I just couldn’t expect it to turn into so much fun.
Since it’s not on IMDB quotes page, and you won’t probably go see the movie just because of it, I though I’d spell it out for you:
Once upon a time there was a family… of elves. And one day the… little elf family… went into… the magic forest… to find a… secret… gnome facility! Where the gnomes were turning mushrooms into a … uranium! So three elves layed down heavy supressive fire on the gnomes while the others manouvered around the right flang finishing off anything left alive. Huh. (Sighs, takes a cookie.) And none of those elves were left behind that day. We got’em all! Even the tiniest elf of all – Rodrigez!
After this scene I was watching the rest of the film with a smile on my face, bursting into laughter once in a while.
Resume: mildy good family comedy with too much military propaganda and violence. Disney these days…