The last time we saw Cameron Diaz on screen, it was way back in 2014. The star, who had been such a magnetic force in Being John Malkovich, My Best Friend’s Wedding and There’s Something About Mary, had checked out with a trio of pale production line films that represented what we’d grimly come to expect at that stage of her career. Diaz had once easily moved between dark and light as well as large and small, had smoothed out any of her more interesting edges to become one of the industry’s highest-paid yet most boringly unchallenged stars. That year saw her lost in the juvenile comedies The Other Woman and Sex Tape before being horrendously miscast in a dud remake of Annie and not long after, she chose to retire, perhaps feeling as glum over the quality of her films as those of us stuck watching them.
News of her re-emergence, after a decade of focusing on family and an organic wine brand, came at an opportune time, as the industry still struggles to find newer and younger yet equally luminous movie stars to take over from those that came before. Many from that era have found success on Netflix, from Adam Sandler and Jennifer Lopez to Jessica Alba, and so it seemed like the smoothest way for Diaz to re-engage with her fans, partnering with her Annie co-star Jamie Foxx for a broadly appealing action comedy. It’s an easy way back in, a low-effort comeback vehicle quite literally called Back in Action, but the film is only a half-victory at best. While it might prove that Diaz still possesses that same particular magic, it also shows that she should be far more discerning with how she chooses to share it.
She’s far from alone in thinking that action comedy is the best way, though. Recent star pairings like Chris Evans and Ana de Armas, Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling, John Cena and Alison Brie, Kaley Cuoco and David Oyelowo, Halle Berry and Mark Wahlberg and then Michelle Monaghan and Mark Wahlberg have all also seen the appeal, even if critics have struggled to agree (only Gosling and Blunt achieved a fresh rating with The Fall Guy). The formula – quip, shoot, kiss, repeat – has become rather exasperating for those of us still awake and paying attention with the choice to coast on the surface pleasures of attractive stars allowing for everything around them to suffer. If only a fraction of the big star salaries had been siphoned off for a script doctor then maybe we could have had some real fun here …
As it stands, the mostly rather rote Back in Action is best seen as just an excuse to watch Diaz act again, and she’s as charming as she always has been, especially alongside Foxx, with whom she shares a comfortable chemistry. They’re playing a couple who give up their exciting lives as spies for the safe predictability of suburbia when they become pregnant. But they get sucked back in when their cover is blown and this time, their kids are coming along for the ride.
Director Seth Gordon is no stranger to middling, lose-lose action comedies, having been involved in the writing of The Lost City while directing both Identity Thief and Baywatch and as in those films, there’s no elegance to how the two genres are clumsily smashed together. Watching a couple and then a family limply banter about screen-time or school pick-up while involved in a car chase or shoot-out isn’t enough to tick both boxes. The majority of the dutifully choreographed action sequences are also soundtracked by discordant, wink-wink love songs, like Etta James’s At Last or Nat King Cole’s L-O-V-E, in such a smug and familiar way that it all starts to feel a little like parody, as we’re watching Action Comedy Movie. The action here is slightly more serviceable (if never remotely exciting) than the comedy, with a script from the Gordon and Neighbours co-writer Brendan O’Brien that settles for tired family sitcom shtick – lazy, exclamation point-heavy one-liners missing all targets entirely, no matter how hard the two stars might try.
While Diaz and Foxx might acquit themselves without any real shame, their supporting cast aren’t quite as lucky. Andrew Scott comes off lightest, just seeming a tad lost as the underwritten big bad, but Glenn Close, as Diaz’s British mother, and her love interest, played bizarrely by Jamie Demetriou, are not quite as lucky, both going super size with go-for-broke pantomime performances, aiming to steal scenes but leaving us with only secondhand embarrassment.
One hopes this is just what Diaz needed to get warmed up again and her next, a role alongside Keanu Reeves in the dark Hollywood-set comedy Outcome should be more rewarding. Back in Action takes her back in time.
Back in Action is available on Netflix from 17 January
