WHEN big-time big time Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer, famous for TV’s CSI series and blockbusters like Pirates of the Caribbean, decided to make G-Force, he wanted more than just a movie for kids.
This is a movie for all ages, though what grabs kids’ attention is completely different from what grabs that of adults.
While the kids will be concentrating on the furry little rodents, the adults will be listening to what they have to say.
In 3-D and with more spy technological gadgets than a James Bond movie, smart dialogue and great visuals, this is a lot of fun for young and old.
With the numerous children’s movies now filling up cinemas and Perth’s continuing spring rain, it looks like a lot of the school holidays will be spent in cinemas.
Movies for kids, like comedies, are the most challenging genres for filmmakers.
Firstly, the writing is difficult. If we had teenagers or even younger screenplay writers, things would be different.
But written and reviewed by adults, children see and hear life through very different eyes and ears than adults.
The older adults get, the more conventionally rational they become. A child’s take on life is completely different.
Unhindered by convention and life experience, for them, nothing is impossible. And this is why G-Force works.
The idea for the movie came from director Hoyt Yeatman’s five-year-old son.
With Yeatman’s visual effects expertise (he won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects for 1989’s The Abyss, writers Cormac Wibberley, Mariannce Wibberley and David P.I. James (a digital effects producer on 2007’s Transformers as well as a fine cast, Bruckheimer had everyone he needed for another great movie.
G-Force – Ben’s (Zach Galifianakis) high-tech spy team of guinea pigs, a mole and insects – work undercover for the FBI.
In the process of shutting down evil megalomaniac consumer-electronics mogul Leonard Saber (Bill Nighy), who wants to take over the world by turning his consumer products into weapons, a FBI management change sees G-Force as unnecessary.
Led by Darwin (Sam Rockwell), the team fights back.
They just need access to Saber’s corporate headquarters and shut down his computer program, which will turn all the coffee makers and other domestic appliances into Transformer-like weapons of mass destruction.
After escaping their FBI facility and into a pet shop, our heroes manage to convince their FBI bosses they can save the world.
G-Force (PG)
Directed by: Hoyt Yeatman
Voiced by: Nicolas Cage, Jon Favreau, Penélope Cruz
Rating: Three and a half stars (88 mins)