Review: ‘G-Force’

They’re cute.   They’re cuddly.   They’re a special force of secret agents funded by the government.   But, most importantly, they’re boring.   Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, ‘G-Force’ certainly has a lot going on in it.   Presented in RealD 3D, the visuals bombard you left and right.   Unfortunately, much like a hamster/guinea pig/gerbil/pick your rodent on a wheel, the film goes absolutely nowhere fast.The film hits the ground running, so much so, in fact, that you might feel like you’ve stepped into the middle of a film already in progress.   We rotate around a table where Zach Galifianakis (who, I hope earned a swell paycheck) is talking Darwin (voiced by Sam Rockwell), the leader of the G-Force.   The team is a specially trained group of animals (three guinea pigs, one mole, and one fly) who infiltrate the deepest, most heavily guarded fortifications the enemies can think up.   That makes sense.   Seeing a group of guinea pigs running across the floor is much less conspicuous than, say, a lone human.  And, okay, maybe they’re not all that specially trained.  The only thing, it seems, the government has done to them is given them devices that allow us to communicate with them.  That, alone, is what makes them make logical and tactical decisions.

Before you can say “rodents who talk,” the adventure begins with Darwin and team infiltrating the mansion of one Leonard Saber (Bill Nighy), who is, evidently, bent on ruling the world with kitchen appliances that turn into killer robots.   Actually, the adventure begins before you can even get your kids’ 3D glasses on, so any opening exposition is lost.   The kids don’t care.   All they want to see are crazy animals flying through the air, driving remote controlled monster trucks, and dishing out cute, little quips.   You’ll be lost on what’s going on or even why, but that’s really a moot point here.  At one point, it is revealed that Saber is working for a mysterious figure.  If, by the end reveal, you haven’t got the mystery figured out, you’re just not paying attention.

Director Hoyt Yeatman doesn’t help the case any.   ‘G-Force’ marks his feature film, directorial debut, and it shows.   The pacing in this film is all off, with some scenes dragging on twice as long as they should and other scenes cutting short just when they might be growing interesting.   Yeatman, for those who don’t know, was the visual effect supervisor behind such Bruckheimer CG-laden classics as ‘The Rock’ and ‘Armageddon.’   That’s strange, however, when you consider how awful the special effects are in ‘G-Force.’   Most of the guinea pig renderings are amateurish, at best, and the killer robots actually make you yearn for another ‘Transformers’ film.   Maybe not that bad, but it’s pretty bad.

Everything about ‘G-Force’ is just a sloppy mess of a kid’s movie, and that’s not even when it gets lame.   Most of the dialogue, particularly the moments where you’re supposed to laugh, is cringe-inducingly bad.   There’s not a shred of subtlety in the humor that comes from the rodents’ voiceboxes, and much of the comedy stems from pop culture references or references to other, far better movies.   At one point, Darwin’s quip to one of the killer robots is “Yipee-ki-yay, Mister Coffee,” and that’s about as inventive as the dialogue gets here.

The voice acting in ‘G-Force’ is fine.   There really isn’t much to say either way.   Rockwell does his best in the “leader who thinks he’s better than everyone else” role.   Tracy Morgan and Penelope Cruz are passable.   I’m sure, on paper, at least, Morgan seemed to be the highlight of the film, but that’s not the case one bit.   He just isn’t given much of anything useful to say.   Jon Favreau as Hurley, a civilian guinea pig the team picks up along the way, does the best that he can.   However, the real standout here is Nicolas Cage.   It is a rare, rare thing to comment that the best part of any film is Nic Cage, but that shoe fits in the case of ‘G-Force.’   Cage provides the voice for Speckles, the computer-genius mole who “has a thing for worms.”   Instead of providing his own, monotone voice, Cage goes back to his early career and pulls his voice from ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’ out of those cinematic mothballs.   He then turns the voice up to 11 and ends up making anytime Speckles is on screen at least partially entertaining.   Of course, ‘G-Force’ finds the only way to even ruin that and makes the character disappear for about half the movie.

The humans (Galifianakis, Nighy, Will Arnett, and Kelli Garner, who seems to be filling a role that had to have been larger in the screenplay) have absolutely nothing to do but hit their marks, say their lines, and try not to draw attention to the fact that they are talking to characters who aren’t even there.

‘G-Force’ is one of those sad cases of a film that is neither commendable nor even such a trainwreck that makes it fun to watch.   It’s a film whose boring execution from a sadly constructed screenplay inspires nothing in the way of praise or venom towards it.   Bruckheimer pumps money and computer effects into the film, but the real people behind it, the shoddy director and the lazy screenwriters, don’t seem to know how to pump any interest in the film.  In the end, it’s all a big waste, and ‘G-Force’ ends up coming off as one of the worst entries into the kid-friendly, action genre in a long time.