1 of 5 | Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz play retired spies in "Back in Action," out Friday on Netflix. Photo courtesy of Netflix
LOS ANGELES, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx are having fun in Back in Action, a comeback for both after retirement and a medical emergency, respectively. Unfortunately, the material sells short their physical and comedic commitment.
The film follows couple Emily (Diaz) and Matt (Foxx), former undercover spies who retired when Emily got pregnant. Fifteen years later, terrorists come looking for the ICS Key from the pair's last mission.
Now that Emily and Matt are parents, they have to take their children, Alice (McKenna Roberts) and Leo (Rylan Jackson), along on their escape.
"Retired spies with families" is quickly getting old as a movie trope. The Family Plan was a fun version of the idea; The Mother a serviceable dramatic one.
Those films are already variations on True Lies, although Arnold Schwarzenegger's Harry Tasker was still active as a spy, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith, though Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's characters didn't have kids yet. The humor in Back in Action draws less from the family situation and more from forced scenarios.
Back in Action sets no less than three action scenes to classic crooner music. One example -- "Ain't That a Kick In the Head" plays while Emily is literally kicking people in the head. Get it?
Other scenes use Etta James' version of "At Last" and James Brown's hit "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag." Sci-fi action film Face/Off used the Brown song better, and it didn't even appear in an action scene.
While the Deadpool movies rely on needle drops to add comedy to their action scenes, at least they pick drastically opposing songs. The songs in Back in Action merely add slight exaggerations to the action scenes.
Even worse is when Emily and Matt sing along to Salt n' Pepa on the radio to embarrass their kids. Singing to an outdated pop song is possibly the laziest trope in comedy, because it's not actually a joke being made.
Doing so expects nostalgia for the song and familiarity, with perhaps memories singing along oneself to engender goodwill. Even if successful, goodwill is still not a joke, and this example is desperate.
The only other contender for laziest trope is pretending a hairbrush is a microphone and singing or lip-syncing into it, so at least Back in Action spares us that.
When Matt mocks the accent of Emily's handler, Baron (Andrew Scott), that's not particularly funny either. However, Matt is smooth when he agrees to give up spying to be a father, and his relationship with Emily remains loving and sincere throughout the film.
Furthermore, a Michael Jackson joke seems a particularly odd choice, especially considering it was added in post-production. Matt makes a joke defending listening to Jackson's music, but Foxx's lips aren't visible in the scene, meaning someone decided he should dub this line into the film.
Even circumstantial dialogue feels incongruous. "What a nightmare" is not something anyone in 2025 would say, no matter how harrowing the circumstances, let alone a spy like Emily.
Back in Action is happy to deploy many of the same predictable plot twists as other spy movies too.
The film's action does prove more effective than the comedy, to the extent that it seems there were some practical stunts. A car chase looks like real cars, though an airplane crash appears to be a visual effect.
Some stuntpeople might have actually parachuted through the mountains, but it's hardly the ski jump stunts from classic James Bond movies. The fight scenes are filmed clearly, so at least director Seth Gordon didn't employ the modern use of shaky camera that obscures choreography.
One highlight is when Emily and Matt visit Emily's mother (Glenn Close) on the run, giving Close a fun, albeit brief, action scene. Her bumbling trainee-slash-lover Nigel (Jamie Demetriou) is one broad character too many, though it is good to see a grandmother still gets to be romantic.
Even when the material is not great, Foxx and Diaz seem committed to being physical and flustered parents. While on par with other original streaming films, it's hard not to lament Diaz's superior Knight & Day and Charlie's Angels or Foxx's Collateral and Baby Driver.
Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.