Playing with Fire

Playing with Fire forces its actors to jump through the obligatory hoops of children's movies, but does so with little to nothing to show for it.  It has the adults overact like morons, it has the kids act like they're smarter than the adults, and it has a dog who mostly just stays in the background and watches the action like a silent observer, giving reaction shots when necessary.  All of these are standard ingredients for a kid's comedy, but this movie does it with no energy.

This is an innocuous but very dumb movie that barely seems to have the energy to care about itself.  Oh sure, the adult actors are giving it all they've got, and mugging for the camera at every opportunity.  But the direction by Andy Fickman (who brought us the equally innocuous but very dumb Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2) is lifeless, and the script is going through the motions.  It's like the filmmakers made a list of what is expected in your standard kid's movie, and threw them in, but their hearts were never in it.  This is a movie that can't even get its prerequisite poop joke right.  The actors overcompensate by expelling vast amounts of energy into their performances, but it just feels desperate.  The only thought a movie like this raises in the audience is: Why did this need to be made?

The plot centers on an uptight and by-the-book "smoke jumper" named Jake Carson (John Cena).  A smoke jumper is like a firefighter, only they dive into dangerous situations from helicopters in order to save lives.  While battling a fire in the California forest, he happens to rescue three kids who are trapped in a burning cabin.  They are the teenaged Brynn (Brianna Hildebrand), the middle child Will (Christian Convery), and the youngest sister Zoe (Finley Rose Slater).  The parents of the kids are nowhere in sight, so Jake takes them back to his fire station to look after them until the parents can arrive.  Naturally, Jake does not get along well with children, and wants them to follow strict rules and guidelines.  Also naturally (or perhaps inevitably), the kids will refuse to follow the rules, and cause lots of comic mayhem.

There are some other guys at Jake's station to help look after the kids, and they are Mark (Keegan-Michael Key), Rodrigo (John Leguizamo) and a burly guy named Axe (Tyler Mane), who never talks and, yes, carries an axe at all times.  They are less strict than Jake, but they also find the children a handful at first.  But soon, the kids will get past the defenses of the adults, and they will create a family of sorts, especially when it is revealed halfway through that the tykes are in fact orphans.  The scenes centered on the characters bonding are stiff and mechanical, and usually revolve around Jake learning how to cut loose and have fun, or the kids teaching the guys how to like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.  There is also a romantic subplot for Jake, as he develops a relationship with a scientist (Judy Greer) who works in a lab nearby.  Due to the lack of chemistry that Cena and Greer display in their scenes together, their entire relationship feels like a series of first dates where both have extreme doubts about whether they want to see each other again. 

For most of its running time, Playing with Fire barely registers a plot, and is simply one scene after another where the kids either cause a mess around the firehouse, or scenes where they bond with the guys.  It's not until the third act that something of importance actually happens, and it's one of the most contrived and unconvincing third act crises I have ever seen in a movie.  Not only does it involve a bunch of random characters suddenly showing up at the exact same time, but it all leads to a climax that just stinks of the writers not knowing how to wrap things up, so they just threw a bunch of stuff in to see if it would stick.  It doesn't, obviously.  Nothing in this movie works, and the final moments only ram that point home. 

I have enjoyed Cena, Key, Leguizamo and Greer in other projects, but here they have been stripped of all talent and personality, and are forced to take countless pratfalls or act like morons.  It's never fun to watch an actor you know is talented work below their ability  It's even less fun when they overact in a desperate attempt to make it look like they're having fun, when in reality, they're probably thinking about what they're going to say to their agents when the shoot is over.

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