Friday, November 5, 2010

Tough guy vs. bratty kids and deadly Ninja!

The Pacifier (2005)
Starring Vin Diesel and Lauren Graham
Director: Adam Shankman
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Vin Diesel stars as Shane Wolfe, the toughest SEAL team commander on active duty. After a botched mission to rescue a scientist who has developed some important new military technoiogy, Lt. Wolfe is assigned to protect the now-dead scientist's five young children from enemy agents still seeking to acquire the missing prototype. What follows is an amusing fish-out-of-water story, as the career SpecOps officer learns about family life, and in turn helps the children through their grief and teaches them alot about discipline and personal responsibility.


This type of story has been told in movies and in Afterschool Specials a hundred times, and "The Pacifier" is an average example of it. It avoids a couple of the most typical cliches of this type of comedy, but it dishes up the rest while even working in typical action movie tropes. (Diesel's fight with the ninjas [yes... the film not only has Navy SEALs, it has ninjas!] and the mini-van car-chase sequences are particularly amusing.)

If you're the overly cynical type, or if you suffer from diabetes, you might want to avoid this film--it will send you into insulin shock. I enjoyed its sweetness, even if there are a couple of plot-holes that bothered me.






1 comment:

  1. agree totally about the plot holes, although a guilty pleasure for me also with this one. Its that kind of movie that is what it is, a bit of fun, great post

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