Playing With Fire Review
PG: For rude humor, some suggestive material and mild peril
Runtime: 1 Hr and 35 Minutes
Production Companies: Paramount Players, Nickelodeon Movie, Walden Media, Broken Road Productions
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Director: Andy Fickman
Writers: Matt Lieberman, Dan Ewen
Cast: John Cena, Keegan-Michael Key, John Leguizamo, Brianna Hildebrand, Dennis Haysbert, Judy Greer
Release Date: November 8, 2019
Director Andy Fickman has found his perfect niche in his career as a filmmaker: it’s to deliberately taint the careers of pro wrestlers carving their way as movie stars by placing them in lame family films geared toward younger audiences that could’ve been sent to television, but some fool said, “Wait! Let’s send this to theaters!” Just around this time 12 years ago, he directed The Game Plan… you know… that comedy starring Dwayne Johnson as a football player who must take care of his daughter (Madison Pettis) that he didn’t know he had. That movie was crap. I hated it when I was a kid and I hate more now as an adult. Now, after two Paul Blart: Mall Cop movies (yeah, he did those too), he’s back with Playing With Fire, a Nickelodeon movie about John Cena as a smokejumper who must take care of three kids he and his team save from a burning cabin. This could’ve been a direct-to-TV movie. Hell, this was originally supposed to come out in 2020 if it wasn’t for that damn blue hedgehog and a fandom that understandably talked shit.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen the original Sonic the Hedgehog trailer with the uncanny design straight out of hell. Because of the Sonic fandom rightfully clamoring for a new redesign, director Jeff Fowler said, “Welp… back to the drawing board,” and Paramount pushed the movie back to February when its initial release date was supposed to be TODAY! So, because of that, they moved up Playing With Fire. That Sonic the Hedgehog movie better be worth it because, in the end, we had to suffer the consequences for that. Sorry, by “we” I meant me.
Hey, John Cena, if Nickelodeon is holding you hostage please blink twice. For the last decade, John Cena has been spending part of his career—when not appearing in comedies or doing WWE stuff—doing anything that Nickelodeon asks him to do. It all started when the YouTube sensation Fred became a TV movie in 2010, which aired on Nick and starred John Cena as Fred’s dad. They made THREE of those movies. Cena starred in three of those movies. Since then, he has appeared in an episode of True Jackson VP, hosted the Kids’ Choice Awards for two years in a row, voices the baddie in the Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, and now hosts the reboot of Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader, which airs on the network. He's been at the channel's beck and call for ten years now and this movie is the cake. Obviously, he enjoys it. I'm not going to knock him on that, but Mr. Cena, you could do better than this. You're more talented than you think.
The film centers on an incompetent team of smokejumpers who rescue three kids from a burning cabin and must take care of them until their parents arrive. Chaos ensues or whatever.
Before I go ham on this movie, I must say, as far as Andy Fickman movies go, I like this more than The Game Plan and probably a bit more than Paul Blart: Mall Cop (the first one). There are some surprisingly valuable aspects present. Believe it or not, I actually really liked the kids. Once you get past the generic and rather poorly executed sequences of slapstick, I found the kids to be charming. Wait, no… let me be specific: I found the eldest kid, Brynn (played by Brianna Hildebrand who is seriously way too talented for a role like this), to be surprisingly more mature than the familiar archetype of a character such as her. In other movies with this plotline, the eldest daughter is always either rebellious, has a nasty attitude, or is full of teenage angst. Brynn’s traits never hit any of those boxes, for she’s the mature voice of wisdom for everyone she interacts with at the fire department. While she’s mischievous with her own ulterior motives, she never gets on your nerves whatsoever.
There is no reason, no reason whatsoever, for this to be on the big screen. We’ve seen this brand of comedy plenty of times before, but on a bigger budget. My main gripe against Playing With Fire is that it’s cheap and ultimately lifeless. It’s not devoid of charm, for there are moments where Cena provides genuine charisma and warmth to his hypermasculine character, but it’s nothing that we haven’t seen before. Vin Diesel did it in The Pacifier and Dwayne Johnson did it in The Game Plan and The Tooth Fairy (damn, Dwayne Johnson did several of these, huh?). Heck, soon enough—as in two months from now—we will see Dave Bautista do it in My Spy. You can see the television quality since the majority of this narrative is set in a single location and feels like it was shot in the span of less than two weeks. I actually felt embarrassed for this cast of talented people doing their damndest to make this work, but they fail due to the lack of any weight in the given material.
You have Keegan Michael Key, John Leguizamo, Judy Greer, and Dennis Haysbert rounding out the cast and sometimes they do things that make you chuckle because they’re just that talented as comedic performers. If only their material provided them with decent jokes and didn’t require them to jump over hurdles, doing their regular shtick as they bring their charisma factor at 100%, making them look like they were held at gunpoint. Yet, after the tenth over exaggerated bit of Key taking dialogue pauses and pacing back and forth, you know they’re given nothing to work with.
Even from a comedic standpoint, most of the jokes fall flat due to terrible editing when scenes of slapstick ensue or constant mugging of the camera happens in order to garner cheap laughs. The story itself is completely predictable and feels so underdeveloped. When there are small glimpses of potential, the movie just resorts to more slapstick, which is completely lazy. The first act of the movie takes place in the span of one day. Immediately after the kids are saved by these smokejumpers, they wreak havoc, exhibiting the inconsequential coddling they received as kids. Will is a little Dennis the Menace, for he’s so grabby with everything in sight and just destroys everything he touches, including dangerous items he’s clearly not supposed to touch. This is done as a means to start wacky sequences of slapstick, which we’ve seen done much more effectively in the past. And Zoey is the cute toddler who is there to elevate the cute factor and bring in some fart and dookie jokes because that’s just what toddlers do.
The only thing this has to offer is a My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic product placement. There is a running gag where John Leguizamo’s character watches My Little Pony with the kids and the youngest girl likes it so they throw her a My Little Pony themed birthday party in the third act. Like, okay, I get the joke. That character might be a brony, yet they never even mention it when the joke was ripe for the taking. And even then, so what? I used to like the show myself when I used to watch it with my sisters, but when was the last time My Little Pony was relevant?! Like, they had their own movie two years ago and the series literally just ended not so long back. Why did we need a movie with absolutely no affiliation with the series whatsoever to serve as a reminder? As I just said, the final act is an extended commercial for the series… WHICH JUST ENDED! This was one Tara Strong cameo away from being pretentious.
I don’t know what kids like these days. My kid sisters are all teenagers now. But I definitely know they don’t want to see this. If it was on Nick, it would’ve been entertaining… I guess. I don’t know because I wouldn’t have watched it in the first place, but since it’s in theaters, I will say this is boring. Because of the overfamiliarity of this unoriginal plot that does nothing new, resorting to poorly edited routined sequences of slapstick comedy that go nowhere, and the lack of energy in the story despite the cast, it comes across as BORING! Frozen II is a mere two weeks away. Just wait until then. And if they want to see Playing With Fire, rent it. It has some enjoyable moments and whatnot, but even then you must walk through the fire itself to find the clear breaths of air.
Seriously, John Cena, you’re better than this.
