The Spy Next Door Movie Review

If most children were given a choice of whom Mom should go out with, they'd choose a fireman or a fighter pilot. Not a geeky pen importer. But Gillian gets to make her own decisions--and her choice is Mr. Ho. Where her kids see a nerdy loser, she sees dependability and a good heart, qualities her cheating ex-husband doesn't have.

Still, Gillian's 13-year-old stepdaughter, Farren, and younger children Ian and Nora have no problem letting her know how they feel about Bob. In fact, when Gillian asks him to baby-sit while she's out of town, Ian says they'd rather go into foster care or juvenile hall. 

But Bob gladly takes charge regardless. The pen gig is just a ruse, after all. He's really an international spy on loan to the CIA. (Take that, fighter jocks!) If he can dupe dictators, how hard can playing house be?

He soon finds out. 

After Ian wreaks havoc by mistakenly downloading a lucrative, top secret file, Bob's archenemy, a Russian terrorist, is now trying to kill him and the kids.

So while making breakfast, carpooling and enforcing bedtimes--not to mention dodging bullets and knives--Bob gradually wins the kids' respect. And when Farren, Ian and Nora learn that he's actually a spy, their admiration level soars. Gillian's, however, dips when she learns he's The Spy Next Door.

Strip away the violence and other negatives in this flick and you can see that The Spy Next Door is attempting to safely secure the happiness of a developing stepfamily. That's no insignificant thing, actually, because this year stepfamilies are predicted to outnumber all other types of American families. More than 1,300 new stepfamilies are forming every day in the U.S. alone. 

It's refreshing, then, to see a fictional clan in the making progress from cuffs to kisses. But

 real life is a lot more complicated than screen life--so let the audience beware. The average stepfamily of any age takes seven years to fully bond--a far cry from Hollywood's charming 90-minute shortcuts. And depending on the complexity of the stepfamily--Gillian's situation is very complex, for example--the remarriage divorce rate is high. 

In Bob and Gillian's case, it helps a lot that the kids come around and eventually root for the nuptials. Ian says he'll personally write the wedding invitations, and Farren tells her mom that she'll never find another man as good as Bob. That helps in real life, too, but it's far from foolproof.

Not that I'm really looking for family-blending advice in a spy spoof that has far more in common with Vin Diesel's Pacifier flick than it does with, say, Ron Deal's book The Smart Stepfamily. Because, really, The Spy Next Door is little more than a silly slapstick caper that glibly dispenses comedic action, some sexual content and a whole lot of disrespect right alongside its lessons. 

At least the good guys win, the world is safe, Bob and his new family learn about love, and Jackie Chan can still jump higher and do more midair twists than an Olympic gymnast.