Spies In Disguise

This review may contain spoilers!

This feels like a fresh animated film that knows how to entertain audiences of all ages. I would give Spies In Disguise an 8/10.

Spies In Disguise follows elite spy, Lance Sterling, and outcast scientist, Walter, as they are forced to work together after one of Walter's experiments turns Lance into a pigeon. Now they only have a few hours to stop rogue villain, Killian before he unleashes an army of drones upon the spy agency. I really enjoyed Spies in Disguise because it felt like a pulse-pounding spy thriller yet had all the trimmings of a fun, family-friendly animated feature.The two characters are extremely interesting; all of the scenes with Lance Sterling are epic moments of action that will have you on the edge of your seat, while Walter comes across more as the heart and conscience of the film. I really liked how this film that had so much action embroiled within it ultimately pushed an anti-violence message consistently throughout. The animation for the film is visually stunning, I liked the sharp features and bold colour palette. The soundtrack for the film is a cool blend of hip hop and well-utilised classical pieces for comedic effect, it also really served the film's themes quite well which you don't always see so strongly from a feature soundtrack.

Rachel Brosnahan and Jarrett Bruno, who voiced Wendy and Young Walter, have a really heartwarming point of connection at the start of the film that sets the tone for the whole feature; Brosnahan does a great job at setting the moral compass the main characters ultimately follow. Reba McEntire, who voiced Joyless, has that stern government agency overseer tone perfect; McEntire's stoic presence feels like a familiar role yet is well-suited to this unique story. Ben Mendelsohn, who voiced Killian, is a merciless antagonist who is hardened by prior conflict with one of the film's protagonists; Mendelsohn really manages to put a bit of fear into the audience with the grim direction he takes his main villain. Tom Holland, who voiced Walter, is a pretty bizarre yet highly likeable main character; Holland delivers blind optimist who sees all the best that can come out of any potential conflict or situation. Rashida Jones, Karen Gillan and DJ Khaled, who voiced Marcy, Eyes and Ears respectively, are really engaging and impressive as the elite team on the trail of rogue Lance and Walter; Jones in particular gets to show a cool streak as a spy on equal level to that of Smith's Lance.

However, the best performance came from Will Smith, who voiced Lance. I think almost the minute we heard Smith oscreen it became abundantly clear that this was going to be the coolest character. Lance is effortlessly good at what he does and boy, does he know it. Smith has a very cocky, arrogant and self-assured spy on his hands, all things his character has gained by being the best in the business. I think it was really great to see how Smith was challenged by Holland's role and the changes his character went through. Ultimately what I liked was seeing this character change their viewpoint, not only becoming a team player but denouncing a violent approach to saving the world.

Spies In Disguise really pulls at the heartstrings and delivers a powerful message but it really needed to trust that the audience could understand this message. Watching this film I often felt like the message was being dumbed down or delivered in an overly repetitive manner so that we would 'get it'. After a point the film was just telling it's message and not showing much trust in the average moviegoer to understand which I felt was a poor move in terms of script. The film also got a bit goofy with how it treated the pigeon transformation, at times the story was really serviced by this and at others we were given awful comedic moments that failed to deliver.

Masi Oka, who voiced Kimura, is a bumbling antagonist often used for the sake of easy comedic relief; Oka's role really doesn't lend a hell of a lot to the feature and the way he's used for comedy doesn't enhance the feature at all.