By Luke Goodsell, ABC News
Review - The last time Cameron Diaz was on screen, Obama was president, eyebrows were on fleek, and a girlboss Taylor Swift was ruling the pop charts with 'Blank Space'.
That's a long time away for a star who'd been a luminous, irrepressible fixture of Hollywood for more than two decades, though it's not like you can blame her for stepping aside to raise kids with a rockstar and run an organic wine label. The formulaic comedies on offer were failing her fizzy, firecracker talent; even a valiantly unhinged performance in 2014's Annie remake couldn't save an otherwise forgettable affair, nor her apparently waning interest in stardom.
Whatever possessed the Charlie's Angels icon to return with this splashy new Netflix spectacle - the imaginatively titled Back in Action - is anyone's guess, even as the breezy action-comedy works as a neat-enough metaphor for her career about-face.
Diaz and her Annie co-star, Jamie Foxx, play Emily and Matt, a married suburban couple who walked away from their glamorous, high-stakes lives as globetrotting CIA operatives after learning they were about to have a child.
"If I'm going to leave my family for 10 hours out of the day, I knew it had to be with someone I could count on," Diaz told Entertainment Tonight about working with Foxx again. Photo: Supplied / Netflix
Fifteen years later, they've disappeared into a vanilla American suburbia of SUVs and football practice, while raising two kids - 14-year-old Alice (McKenna Roberts) and 12-year-old Leo (Rylan Jackson) - who regard mum and dad as total squares.
Not that Emily and Matt can conceal their own boredom. She sells bespoke craft puzzles on Etsy, while he's busy scowling at Alice's 16-year-old boyfriend and his teenage moustache. Soon, they've stalked their daughter to a nightclub, where a scuffle with some older boys leads to the couple unleashing mayhem - and blowing their carefully constructed cover in the process.
Threatened by a gang of Belarusian terrorists on the hunt for a deadly cyber-security device, the family packs up and hightails it to London, where Matt has stashed the gadget at the manor of Emily's estranged, ex-MI6 mother (a plummy, tweed-clad Glenn Close, having what appears to be the movie's one genuinely great time).
Their ex-boss (Kyle Chandler) seems to be dead, and a shady British agent (Andrew Scott) is on their trail. You can more or less clock the ensuing plot beats with your eyes closed.
"It was a really fun character," Glenn Close told TODAY (US). Photo: Supplied / Netflix
What is there really to say about a movie like Back in Action, which - for all its obvious expense and glossy surfaces - is designed to keep subscribers mindlessly engaged without disrupting them from folding their washing, cooking dinner, or whatever else they're doing while the streamer's key metrics chug along?
It's the movie equivalent of an inoffensive, algorithmically generated Spotify playlist - background in action. Take that for whatever it's worth.
Director Seth Gordon (Horrible Bosses; 2017's Baywatch), working from a script he co-wrote with Brendan O'Brien (the Bad Neighbours movies), keeps the slick, anonymous set-pieces rolling along at a clip.
"I was perfectly happy living my life ... and then I get a phone call from Jamie Foxx and how do you say no to Jamie Foxx?" Diaz told Netflix about Back in Action being her comeback movie. Photo: Supplied / Netflix
There's a running thread of playful banter, plenty of CGI carnage, and a slew of diet-John-Wick brawls scored to old-timey standards from the likes of Dean Martin, Nat King Cole and Etta James - presumably so as not to upset dinner.
Diaz and Foxx are immensely charismatic stars, and they share an on-screen chemistry that's not without its appeal. (Pity poor Andrew Scott, though, who seems vaguely pained as he goes through the motions, as though his cheque had yet to clear.)
Director Seth Gordon keeps the slick, anonymous set-pieces rolling along at a clip. Photo: Supplied / Netflix
As low-stakes filler, Back in Action is never less than diverting, especially for an audience in an undemanding mood.
But when the filmmaking is this generic, and the writing this uninspired, you do have to wonder how far we're away from a movie like this being entirely, and indifferently, generated by AI - when 'stars' can be digitally scraped from data, minus the exorbitant salary.
It's why Back in Action's better moments are the ones that remind us of the actors' distinctive personalities, when we get a glimpse - however briefly - of the human moments of performance. Diaz and Foxx rapping along to Salt-N-Pepa's 'Push It' while their zoomer kids roll their eyes back into infinity? It's just the sort of scene the movie could've delivered more.
It's a shame that Back in Action doesn't really tap into its stars' comedic abilities, nor into Diaz's talent for going unexpectedly dark and deranged - the kind of performances that would occasionally flare up in movies like Vanilla Sky and The Counselor.
Still, there's no denying that it's nice to have her back.
- ABC News
