Spies in Disguise (2019)
Directed by Nick Bruno
Super spy Lance Sterling and scientist Walter Beckett are almost exact opposites. Lance is smooth, suave and debonair. Walter is… not. But what Walter lacks in social skills he makes up for in smarts and invention, creating the awesome gadgets Lance uses on his epic missions. But when events take an unexpected turn, Walter and Lance suddenly have to rely on each other in a whole new way.
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4 films that influenced Spies in Disguise
What critics say influenced Spies in Disguise
The first-time directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, who worked on the Ice Age movies and Hotel Transylvania, have crafted some handsome, angular animation and a story that nods to Mission Impossible, The Incredibles and, of course, James Bond.
Blue Sky Studios, the company behind the Ice Age series, seems to have wanted to take their knack for making films about animals (they’re also responsible for Ferdinand and the Rio films) and combine that with their admiration for Pixar’s Incredibles movies.
Produced by the team at Blue Sky — Bruno and Quane previously collaborated on the animation shingle’s “Ice Age” features and its recent “Peanuts” movie — “Spies in Disguise” is rendered in colorful, zippy style.
Compared to their first feature, Ice Age , where the human models were adequate and are now dated, it’s a marginal improvement.
While it’s unlikely to make anyone’s top 10 list for best animated feature, Blue Sky Studios – the gang behind the exceedingly popular Ice Age franchise – Spies in Disguise is a fair-to-middling example of a movie that knows its core demographic and rarely bothers to aim higher than, oh, 4 foot, 4 inches.
The latest release from Blue Sky Studios, the company behind the Ice Age and Rio films, follows the unlikely duo of James Bond-esque super-spy Lance Sterling (Smith) and awkward tech prodigy Walter Beckett (Tom Holland).
These factors make Spies in Disguise less James Bond, though a few of the intricately composed action sequences do have references to Casino Royale and Skyfall , and more Ethan Hunt.
However, it’s still surprisingly closer to Casino Royale than A View To A Kill. There’s a lot of destruction, thrills, and lives on the line in a film that finds a way to balance tone and emotion properly.
These factors make Spies in Disguise less James Bond, though a few of the intricately composed action sequences do have references to Casino Royale and Skyfall , and more Ethan Hunt.
As you’d expect, Spies In Disguise hits every 007/ M:I trope imaginable, from a pre-credit mission where Lance takes on a version of Kill Bill ’s Crazy 88, to a bombastic ’70s-styled title sequence, a MacGuffin (a list of the whereabouts of secret agents that similarly formed the plot of Skyfall ), underground bases (Lance’s HQ is hidden beneath the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool), globetrotting (Japan, Mexico, Venice) and a villain with a prosthetic limb (Ben Mendelsohn’s Killian has a clawed hand).
The first-time directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, who worked on the Ice Age movies and Hotel Transylvania, have crafted some handsome, angular animation and a story that nods to Mission Impossible, The Incredibles and, of course, James Bond.