Recently, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert won the Oscar for Best Director for Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), a film that could be described as an action comedy. It's rare that filmmaking duos who aren't related by blood or by marriage see that level of success. Collectively, they're known as "the Daniels." However, quiet as it's kept, there's another non-related filmmaking duo creating cool, if not silly, action comedies. They are John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein who aren't but could be known as "the Jonathans."
Daley and Goldstein have collaborated for over a decade on several, Hollywood projects, mainly as writers, starting with Horrible Bosses (2011). They transitioned into directing with the road trip flick, Vacation (2015). Their best work would come not that long later with the amazing Game Night (2018). It feels as though the pair took elements from their previous works and overlaid a fantasy skin akin to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) or Game of Thrones (2011). However, Daley and Goldstein don't treat that skin with much reverence. It's window dressing for the comedy.
Chris Pine (Wonder Woman and Star Trek) stars as Edgin, a widowed father who turns to thievery in order to support his daughter. When a theft goes wrong, he's captured and put into prison. He's separated from his daughter for years. When he finally gets out, he wants to reunite his family in more ways than one. He not only wants to prove himself to her but he also has to overcome the lies that have been told about him.
Hugh Grant (Notting Hill and Bridget Jones's Diary) co-stars as Forge, a con artist who was part of Edgin's crew and who is currently a greedy, middle-aged man. When Edgin goes to prison, Forge is the one who basically takes custody of Edgin's daughter and raises her as if she were his own child. When Edgin goes free, Forge refuses to give her back. Grant has played villains in several recent films, including Guy Ritchie's Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2022), which was theatrically released three weeks before this one. Grant isn't doing anything different than he was in that Ritchie film, as well as recent others. He's charming and cheeky, a lovable rogue, entertaining in his evil. He gets a lot of the best lines.
Grant is camping it up for sure, but so is most of the cast, as it was likely written. Grant's performance is not far flung from Pine's at all. The performances are as much anachronistic as you'd find in any sketch comedy series. It's breezy and easygoing though with a lot of fairly good gags and one-liners. It's not as funny as Game Night because the stakes never feel as solid and there is hardly anything here that feels earnest or genuine. As ridiculous as it all is, there's not much that's as emotionally grounded as in Game Night. It's not that the film doesn't try though.
Michelle Rodriguez (The Fast and the Furious and Avatar) also co-stars as Holga, a warrior who is the right-hand woman to Edgin. When Edgin was put in prison, she was his cell mate. She loves potatoes and is an incredible fighter. She's skilled and super strong. She's also the one who helps Edgin to raise his daughter after his wife died. He describes her as a sister and their relationship feels like siblings but that's tenuous in how strong or even how deep that relationship is. It feels initially as if the two are only together out of circumstance than genuine, brother-and-sisterly affection.
By the end, that relationship and particularly the relationship between Holga and Edgin's daughter are meant to be an emotional core that falls rather flat. We're supposed to see Holga in a light of warmth and even surrogate motherhood that the film never fully sells prior to that end. It even feels like a weird pivot. At first, Holga is this fierce, almost stoic warrior, but than all of a sudden at the end, we're meant to see her as this soft, compassionate mom. It's a bit jarring.
Justice Smith (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Pokémon: Detective Pikachu) plays Simon, a young sorcerer who isn't good at being a sorcerer. This is mainly due to his lack of confidence. It's also in part due to him coming from a long line of sorcerers and him feeling like he can't live up to them. A large chunk of the second and even third act is devoted to his character arc and Simon's emotional growth. Smith has a lot of scenes with Pine to that point.
So much so, the sibling relationship felt stronger between Edgin and Simon. It seemed more like the emotional core would have come down to them, and not Edgin and Holga. Holga really has no character arc or much of anything beyond being an action star in martial arts mode with the exception of one surprising scene. Instead, Simon is the one who has the emotional beats, which Smith nails, along side an okay, British accent.
Regé-Jean Page (The Gray Man and Bridgerton) is a gorgeous man, one of the most beautiful and certainly one of the sexiest men to grace the screen. Yet, he's virtually unnecessary here. The diversion in the script that introduces his character and then that subsequently dispatches him felt like padding, if not a waste of time. Also, don't let the title fool you. There's a supreme lack of both titular objects.
Rated PG-13 for fantasy action, violence and language.
Running Time: 2 hrs. and 14 mins.
In theaters.
