Bouncing Birdy Spies

For a spy, is getting turned into a pigeon a hindrance or an asset? 2019's Spies in Disguise seeks to answer this question in a movie filled with friendly cgi faces, nice performances, and a wobbly screenplay.

We meet young Walter as a junior high school student, developing pacifist gadgets to help his mother, a policewoman, in her job, like a watch that sprays glitter under the theory that glitter makes people happy. His mother tells him that, whatever happens, she'll always be there to support him, and says and does just about everything to broadcast to the audience that she will be dead soon. Well, unless that audience is under four years old, which I think is the target for this film.

Walter grows up to be voiced by that famously flustered, mild mannered boy star, Tom Holland, and he goes to work with for the U.S. government. He's paired with an obnoxious superstar spy, Lance Sterling, played by Will Smith.

Smith's famous natural charisma is taxed with a character who's angry for most of the film, threatening to smack Walter half the time for not giving him grenades. This leads to a story about the choice between violent and diplomatic methods, a theme that never really fits in a film that includes a car chase where a pigeon, driving a superspy car, evades dozens of pursuing agents with fortuitous slapstick. But to a viewer young enough to disregard such tonal clashes, or to be unfamiliar with the films this one is sleepily aping, there should be no impediment to enjoying a film filled with bright colours, cute animals, and smiling faces.

Spies in Disguise is available on Disney+.

Twitter Sonnet #1640

The yielding walls were blamed for crashing cars.
A hidden, stony sky was dark as night.
The lost assigned to rocks the role of stars.
But something 'bout a diamond's never right.
Authentic thoughts were dropped in vibrant slime.
Alive, the angel peeks beneath the drain.
Another rain and horses tramp in time.
Reversion checked a list of lately sane.
Returning voices hammer doors to pulp.
Affections pass betwixt the science ghosts.
To chug the slime we need to quickly gulp.
And now we meet a score of phantom hosts.
And yet the humans feed on bread for birds.
And bouncing bubbles matter more than words.