Spies In Disguise Review Roundup

If you believe that you somehow missed the release of Blue Sky Studios' new animated movie Spies in Disguise, you would be forgiven. The film was first slated to release this past September but was further delayed to October. Yet, here were are on the 19th day of December and the spies remain in disguise. Thankfully, the movie is finally releasing this Christmas Day and we got the critic reviews to prove it. Here's the review roundup:

VARIETY 
"Ben Mendelsohn voices the villain, a scowling dude named Killian who, for some reason, resembles Jonathan Rhys Meyers. His master plan? Armed with a battalion of 1,000 drones, he has stolen the information that will allow him to identify Lance’s fellow secret agents. And that’s the entire plot! It’s a big nothing. (No wonder it gets resolved with glitter and Silly String.) Holland, in this role, sounds unnervingly young (he’s playing the boyish straight man), and Smith acts with spicy confidence when Lance looks like Lance — but as Lance-the-pigeon, he’s peevish and a bit dull. The trouble with a film like “Spies in Disguise” isn’t that it’s less than sparklingly animated but that as technically bravura as it is, there is never anything at stake."

Click here for the full review. 

SCREEN RANT
"Ultimately, Spies in Disguise is more clever than you might expect of a movie about a super-spy being turned into a pigeon, especially in its references to Bond-style spy films. The movie delivers plenty of fun for viewers of all ages - silly slapstick comedy for the young kids and some dark humor for the adults. It's goofy, absurdist fun with some marvelously delightful moments (one in particular has to do with Walter's love of K-dramas) and a good message at its heart. While Spies in Disguise may have gotten lost in the holiday movie rush without such big headliners, Smith and Holland should help the film to break through as it provides some good counterprogramming at the theater. All told, moviegoers young and old will be pleased by what Spies in Disguise delivers."

​Click here for the full review.

THE GUARDIAN 
"There are some decent laughs and fun as Smith and Holland provide the bickering dialogue accompaniment for Lance and Walter, the ill-matched duo who fight the forces of darkness in locations ranging from Venice to Washington DC. Lance’s worst moment of enforced pigeonhood comes when he has to visit the bathroom and realises that what he primly calls number ones and number twos come out of the same orifice: the cloaca. (A teachable moment for one and all.) As with so many family animations right now, I felt that the script stays on the safe side, with fewer smart lines and ironic gags than I might have wished for, but this is a good-natured entertainment."

​Click here for the full review.

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 
"What’s striking about the script by Brad Copeland and Lloyd Taylor, from a screen story by Cindy Davis, is how exceptionally unmotivated the whole story is. Numerous excuses are invented for big action sequences all over the world, but it never feels like there’s a rhyme or reason to where the characters are going or what they’re doing once they arrive. Yes, there’s a supervillain of sorts, a terrorist named Killian (Ben Mendelsohn) who’s into weaponized drones, but he and all the rest of the goons could not be more generic. Little kids playing good guys and bad guys could come up with something this basic on a moment’s notice, and there’s no special dimension or plain old imagination here to generate genuine engagement or even just old-fashioned fun."

​Click here for the full review.

INDIEWIRE
"Inevitably, Lance learns some big lessons about loving yourself (even as a pigeon) and getting hip to the likelihood that drone-based warfare is a bad idea. Heady ideas for any audience, but certainly good ones for the youngsters who will also be charmed by the film’s goofy humor (fine, yes, adults will, too). While the beats are familiar and even a film about animated pigeons can’t quite break out of the tropes that have long defined the spy film genre, it’s the kind of sweetly demented late-December diversion that should entertain plenty of holiday-weary families. Will Smith as a pigeon? Sure, but it’s those ideas about making the world a better place that are the ones that really fly."

Click here for the full review.

Currently, the film has a respectful score of 78% from a total of 32 reviews over at rotten tomatoes. Launching a family movie on Christmas Day is always seen as a smart strategy, but, it remains to be seen if the constant changing of release dates will hurt any momentum the film may have had. 

​Again, Spies in Disguise will be in theaters this Christmas Day in the States. 

​-YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN:

FROZEN 2 REVIEW ROUNDUP

A FIRST LOOK AT PIXAR'S SOUL

ABOMINABLE REVIEW ROUNDUP