It’s a little early in Vin Diesel’s career for him to try the family comedy sidebar. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone were well into their blood-spilling stardom when they decided to go the PG-rated route.
Nevertheless, here’s Vin in “The Pacifier,” a slapdash Disney comedy aimed at kids. He’s a tough Navy SEAL who gets assigned to baby-sit five children after their father is killed and their mother (Faith Ford) goes to Switzerland to figure out a secret code.
The children are in some danger, since the bad guys think the secret code might be in the family house in Maryland. (The bad guys are either Serbian or North Korean, or possibly some other stop on the axis of evil.) Instead of removing the kids to safety, our man Diesel is left alone in the house with no backup.
Actually, there is another adult in the home, a cook with a Bela Lugosi accent. She’s played by Carol Kane, which leads to one of the film’s low points, and likely the all-time low-point in Vin Diesel’s career: He has a knock-down drag-out fight with Carol Kane – yes, tiny Carol Kane of “Taxi” – and loses.
The film never really recovers. There’s lots of cute antics with Vin and the kiddies, including the obligatory diapering and spit-up scenes, emotional bonding with the uncomfortably attractive oldest daughter and manly support for a teenage son who would rather dance in a production of “The Sound of Music” than wrestle for the school team.
The children, who all have a touch of the “Home Alone” kid in them, are amazingly blithe about the death of their father, which is supposed to have happened just two months earlier. The film has other fish to fry, such as a series of supposedly hilarious pranks played on adults. Somehow I suspect most parents will find the technique of spreading vegetable oil at the top of the staircase to be distinctly unfunny.
Vin Diesel, who sounds more than ever like Elliott Gould, isn’t too believable as the cuddly father figure. He isn’t believable as the Navy SEAL, either, as we see in an opening scene that may be the least plausible secret mission ever put on film.
But it’s no use criticizing this movie based on plausibility. By the time we get to a booby-trapped secret underground chamber, you realize the level of fantasy at work here.
Brad Garrett, the looming lummox from “Everybody Loves Raymond,” provides a bit of comic relief (in a comedy) as the designated bully, and “Gilmore Girls” star Lauren Graham shows up to give obligatory romance for Vin. Like all the other plot mechanisms, these feel like digits arranged in a computer program for screenwriting. And digits, by and large, are neither funny nor heartwarming.
Vin Diesel goes the cuddly, PG-rated route in “The Pacifier.”
“The Pacifier” H
Really implausible: Vin Diesel tries the family-comedy route for Disney, as a Navy SEAL assigned to baby-sit five kids for a couple of weeks. He shows no flair for comedy, and the movie’s implausibility stretches even the loose standards of a kiddie movie.
Rated: PG rating is for subject matter.
Now showing: tk
“The Pacifier” H
Really implausible: Vin Diesel tries the family-comedy route for Disney, as a Navy SEAL assigned to baby-sit five kids for a couple of weeks. He shows no flair for comedy, and the movie’s implausibility stretches even the loose standards of a kiddie movie.
Rated: PG rating is for subject matter.
Now showing: Alderwood, Everett 9, Galaxy, Marysville, Mountlake, Stanwood, Meridian, Metro, Oak Tree, Woodinville, Cascade, Oak Harbor Plaza.
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