Playing With Fire

This review may contain spoilers!

If this is the bar for comedy films in 2020 then we have a lot to worry about. I would give Playing With Fire a 1.5/10.

Playing With Fire follows a crew of Smoke-Jumpers who have their work cut out for them after rescuing and sheltering a trio of young children. At its best this film manages to find a couple of scenes where the absurd over the top comedic energy they're trying to capture works for a scene or two. There are certainly some moments worth laughing at within the film.

John Leguizamo, who played Rodrigo, works well in the over the top comedic tone; he plays well with the material he's given and manages to find some genuine laughs in a few scenes. Brianna Hildebrand, who played Brynn, feels like a tough, yet loyal caretaker to her siblings; Hildebrand generates this compassion and genuine care for her onscreen family that's great to watch. Dennis Haysbert, who played Commander Richards, is this excellent, intense fire-fighting legend who is placed on quite a funny pedestal; Haysbert manages the stoic, overly serious firefighter persona better than the film's lead.

However, the best performance came from Keegan-Michael Key, who played Mark. Key is a veteran comic performer and knows how to deliver to the tone of a variety comedic pieces. In this film he really played to the over the top comedy in all the right ways, he knew just how far to take it in every scene he was and it was clear that was a big help to a number of his co-stars, particularly Cena. The role of Mark is this very high strung, overly organized Captain who likes to micro-manage every small detail of the job his superintendent hasn't already overseen. I like how Key played to the close bond he and Cena's role shared, it was a best/friend/work colleague relationship that was a lot of fun to watch.

This film was a mess right from the beginning, from the poor quality production value, overacting and cringeworthy pratfall humour. The story for this feature takes so long to actually get anywhere of worth; in fact the entire plot is about a third of the runtime, the shoddy generic romance subplot another ten minutes and the rest is very easy comedic jokes that a ten year old could have conjured up. The dialogue is awful and each scene feels like the actors were told to play extremely over the top beyond the realms of which was enjoyable to watch. Every comedic instance seemed built around a cheap gag or somebody injuring themselves in a funny way, nothing that ever actually made the film itself funny. I never connected with the characters because the film never made the effort to try, the few scenes that did often pulled the rug out from under itself by throwing a dumb joke in and the cheesy happy ending at the end wasn't deserving. The cinematography for this film doesn't belong on television let alone the cinema screen, the poor framing and boring angles might have made an impression in a Youtube video. The editing for the film was dull and tired, setting a slow pace that dragged the film out longer than the writing was already doing. The soundtrack for the feature was a mish-mash of pop songs and fire-themed tracks that indicated a confusing tone and a lack of interest in achieving something musically, including the My Little Pony theme song was the hardest scene I've ever watched. 

John Cena, who played Jake Carson, was not the best leading performer for this film; Cena is consistently so wooden to watch and never matches up to being actually funny in a comedic film. Christian Convery, who played Will, is the type of child acting I've seen a million times before; Convery is sweet and moronically naive that leads to bumbling scenes not at all worth watching. Finley Rose Slater, who played Zoey, can't act and the editing often reveals this; I get the need for a cute young kid but at least cast one who can manage being in a large number of scenes. Judy Greer, who played Dr Amy Hicks, seems very poorly cast as she doesn't have much compatibility with Cena at all; Greer's overacting gets more uncomfortable to watch the more the film relies on her in comedic scenes. Tyler Mane, who played Axe, is this stoic, unbelievable role who often feels comfortable in the background; Mane doesn't seem to know how to turn this strange role into something funny to watch.