G-Force

What a peculiar movie. In most respects G-Force should be awful. It makes no real sense, it barely has a plot (it’s basically one long chase scene), it quite often disappears into the downright stupid and it’s not even particularly funny, but it’s nevertheless oddly entertaining.

Basically Zach Galifianakis has been holed up in a warehouse teaching three Guinea Pigs to become secret agents. Why? God knows, because the FBI, in the form of Will Arnett, don’t seem that impressed and want to shut him down (apparently creating talking animals that can do undercover James Bond style missions isn’t that impressive to the US Federal Government). The rodents go on the run rather than becoming lab animals, initially ending up in a pet shop, where they meet the less goal-oriented guinea pig Hurley. The animals need to escape because they believe an industrialist (Bill Nighy) has some sort of weird world domination plan that’s going to happen in a few hours time, and they might be the only ones who can stop it.

I think the moment I realised this movie wasn’t going to make a lick of sense was when the screenplay credit came up and it read ‘The Wibberleys’. To be fair, that is actually Cormac and Marianne’s surname, but it was a handy precursor, as you pretty much know anything credited to a an entity as silly-sounding as ‘Wibberleys,’ ain’t gonna be Shakespeare. What they’ve come up with is an 88-minute chase scene that occasionally pauses to pretend to do a character arc (something about that age-old universal theme of realising that it doesn’t really matter if you’re a genetically modified super-guinea pig or not).

But despite G-Force’s flaws, it doesn’t really matter too much because the guinea pigs are cute, the special effects are good (and pretty much non-stop), and the frantic pace mean it never lulls. It’s also true that despite the entire idea of a movie about CG guinea pigs seeming too stupid for words, it’s actually a smarter idea than it appears. You just look at the rather daft looking animals and it makes a dumb family-action farce much easier to swallow, especially when they have the voices of Steve Buscemi, Sam Rockwell, Jon Favreau and Penelope Cruz. Watching guinea pigs trying to be spies is just bizarrely fun.

Incidentally Nicolas Cage plays a mole in the movie, which is fine, except he puts on a silly voice so you’d never know it was him. It does kind of make you wonder what the point is of putting an a-list star in a voice role if you can’t recognise the voice, but it’s certainly better than Cage playing Cage in a movie like this.

One of the main things the movie is being sold on is that the whole thing was made in 3D, and it’s certainly true that if you’ve got digital 3D screen near you, that’s the way to see it. Having a special effects supervisor making his directorial debut with the film (Hoyt Yeatman), means that the use of 3D seems better thought out in G-Force than in many films. With many movies it seems either pointless or showy and gets in the way of the story and the way it flows. However, here the framing of shots and the whole way the movie is put together makes the 3D feel a lot more integral. Oh, and incidentally, if you go watch the 3D version on an Odeon screen, they’ve also got 3D trailers for Up, A Christmas Carol, Toy Story 3 and Alice In Wonderland, which are definitely worth watching.

No one’s going to be winning any awards for G-Force, but when most family films fail to even raise a smile, G-Force just about manages to keep you entertained for its 88-minute running time. There’s also little doubt that with kids now out on their summer holidays, younger children will have a great time (although you might have to tell them not to treat their own guinea pigs like the ones in the movie).

Overall Verdict: Stupid, bizarre and very silly, but nevertheless I was entertained. Maybe I’ve just got a thing for cute rodents trying to be spies.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac