Generic & Forgettable
Summary
The Family Plan will be fun for those looking for an undemanding 2 hours but I found the pacing dragged at times and the script just wasn’t all that funny. It has a few enjoyable action set-pieces, but nothing that will be remembered.
Plot: A former top assassin living incognito as a suburban dad must take his unsuspecting family on the run when his past catches up to him.
Review: It’s easy to understand why The Family Plan went straight to streaming as it’s so generic and offers nothing we haven’t seen many times before. Mark Wahlberg tries his hand at a True Lies-esque storyline as a family man who hides his real profession as an assassin from his family. His former enemies start looking for him and he tries to stop them while maintaining his cover.
What ensues is a rather long hour and 58 minutes which I admittedly dozed off during which is never a good sign. I rewound it to make sure I didn’t miss any interesting plot developments or funny moments, but I didn’t. In fact, I don’t think I noticed any funny moments at all for the majority of the runtime.
This is a movie for undemanding viewers who maybe haven’t watched as many action movies as I have and are just looking for diverting Saturday night fare, so in that respect The Family Plan Delivers. It’s inoffensive and the PG-13 rating means it’s mostly safe for family viewing although I noticed “fuck” was said 3 times and I always thought you could only say it once in PG-13 movies.
It takes a while for any action to occur, but Lateef Crowder never disappoints and the supermarket fight between he and Wahlberg is fun even if the fights are too overly edited at times. I’ve seen worse though and the action is generally well done even off nothing really stands out.
That’s generally my biggest problem with this movie; nothing stands out about it. I watched it last night and I’ve already forgotten nearly everything about it. It never feels like it has a huge budget lacking the scale of the superior True Lies which I recommend watching instead of this.
In terms of performances, Mark Wahlberg is quite bland in the lead role but I did enjoy Michelle Monaghan as his wife Jessica and Maggie Q automatically makes any movie better too. I’ve seen reviews saying how the baby was funny, but I think that was aimed at a younger audience which begs the question, who is this movie for? I don’t feel like I’m the target audience, so I figure it’s aimed at parents with young kids who just want 2 hours of escapism.
Overall, The Family Plan offers nothing new to the genre with very little you’ll remember by the time the end credits roll. It has a few entertaining action scenes but not enough to really recommend, so I suggest watching the 4K of True Lies when that comes out instead.