Susan Granger’s review of “G-Force” (Walt Disney Pictures)
If you’re desperate to get the kids out of the house – and the rain – and into the Cineplex for 1 hour and 28 minutes, you could do worse than Jerry Bruckheimer’s 3-D action comedy about guinea pigs as secret agents but – then again – you could do better.
Dr. Ben Kendall (Zach Galifianakis) is an FBI agent who supervises a Homeland Security course to train animals as spies. His best performers are three ‘genetically engineered’ guinea pigs: team leader Darwin (voiced by Sam Rockwell); martial arts ‘Latina mama,’ Juarez (voiced by Penelope Cruz); and hip-hop weapons expert, Blaster (voiced by Tracy Morgan), along with a blind-but-brainy computer-whiz mole called Speckles (voiced by Nicolas Cage) and Mooch, the voiceless fly.
When Ben’s G-man boss, Kip Killian (Will Arnett), scuttles the covert program, the tiny, elite super agents escape from a pet shop, where they pick up backup via a tubby guinea porker, Hurley (voiced by Jon Favreau), and a goofy, seed-hoarding hamster, Bucky (voiced by Steve Buscemi), and elude two aggressively imaginative children (Piper Mackenzie Harris, Tyler Patrick Jones), to embark on a mission to infiltrate the home of a diabolical weapons-dealer-turned-electronic appliance magnate, Saber (Bill Nighy), who has a secret plan to employ a computer virus (“Operation Clusterstorm”) to achieve global domination, Megatron-style.
With experienced visual effects artist Hoyt H. Yeatman Jr. at the helm, there’s plenty of loud, fast-paced chase sequences, utilizing the photorealistic CGI, amplified by 3-D technology, despite the surprisingly generic script churned out by Marianne and Cormac Wibberley, who did so much better penning “National Treasure” and “The Shaggy Dog” remake.
There’s some predictably dangerous business with a Doberman – but what’s with this furry ‘rodent’ fascination, featured in “The Tale of Despereaux,” “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,” “Bedtime Stories” and “Bolt”? It’s a shame that none of them even come close to Disney’s Mickey and Minnie, who never resorted to poop jokes and farting to elicit laughs. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “G-Force” is a flashy, high-octane, frenetic 5, or as Darwin yells, “Yippie ki-yay, coffeemaker!”
