Good story, Not enough for a whole film

good back-story, and good acting

Crappy film

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

My daughter was watching the movie and I noticed a scene where Jackie Chan was trying to dress the little girl on the floor as she struggled with him.At one point (while she was in her underwear) she is laying directly in front of him on her back and begins kicking him. While doing so, her legs are open and showing a bit more than I felt comfortable with. In a few seconds the camera zooms in and clearly shows between her legs much closer, showing the looseness of the underwear and it was extremely unnecessary.For this reason, I won't give this movie a 10. With the people who had to sign off on the movie before it went to theaters, etc... this should have been spotted and revised.

Jackie Chan is a secret agent on loan to the US, looking forward to retirement while fostering a burgeoning relationship with single mother Amber Valletta and her 3 children who, predictably, don't like him This standard romantic comedy plot benefits greatly from the Chan touch, which adds a lot of witty action in the manner we have become used to over the years, albeit a little slower (or, perhaps, with the camera cranked at normal speed rather than undercranked). Amber Valletta has a pleasing and credible presence, and the baddies are entertaining caricatures. Of the children, the two girls do well but the lad overacts badly in a part which is badly written.We greatly enjoyed this, laughing out loud several times and smiling solidly throughout.

Which leaves The Spy Next Door pretty much a departure from contemporary adventure flicks which tend to draw upon violence and gore in its action sequences, to keep it within a safe, acceptable rating. Jackie Chan plays Bob Ho, a man with as much personality as his any of his past heroes, which tend to be cop / secret agent belonging to the Hong Kong / Chinese police / spy agency, and here he's on loan to the CIA because of warming Sino-US relations. For years he's been helping out and solving what the Americans cannot, keeping in line with Hollywood's trend of putting China in good light, and he does so undercover and under fake glasses, living next to a divorcée (played by Amber Valletta) whom he fancies, and her three kids.They do not know his identity as his cover is as a geeky pen salesman, and like any super- hero film, has to keep his identity, abilities and tools a secret, which you know will be threatened for exposure as he grows closer to the family, wanting to take his relationship with Valletta's Gillian to the next step, and working toward seeking acceptance from her children, only for a Russian criminal to escape and threaten the world's oil reserve, and having to grapple with a mole within the CIA. Sounds complicated, but it actually isn't, really, especially when the main villain (Magnus Scheving) spends a lot of his time trying to look trendy and fashionable.If there's something that will appeal, it'll be two items. First up the opening credit montage which played like a celebration to Chan's illustrious career as an action hero, where you get to see clips from classics such as Hong Kong's Armour of God when he was at his peak, to disasters like Hollywood's Tuxedo when he sold out to the West. Then there's even some drawing from Chan's own real life experiences in his character's monologue about love and family, exploited to add certain emotional gravitas in an otherwise empty film that spends fleeting moments in its underdeveloped subplots about the adventures in parenting/babysitting, from the youngest daughter with a fetish for anything pink, the only son who's a school-bully fodder trying too hard to be cool in school, and an eldest daughter with the usual rebellious teenage attitude problem.

This movie got negative reviews because critics didn't take into account that it's a kids movie. There is a script...it's barely there, but what's important is that it is there.Basically it's about a Chinese spy named Bob Ho who is on loan to the CIA. He's planning to retire so he can marry his next door neighbor, Gillian, a single mother with three kids who hate Bob. When Gillian has to leave town, Bob is in charge of looking after the kids while fighting off his nemesis, a Russian named Poldark.Jackie Chan is just Jackie Chan. Comic while still providing decent fight scenes. Nothing special. Not surprisingly, Madeline Carroll did a good job as Farren, Gillian's rebellious 13-year-old stepdaughter. She did great, considering what she was given. The character of the son was extremely annoying. Just everything about him got on my nerves. And the four-year-old was adorable enough.The fight scenes are all slapstick. They're a bit over-the-top and I question the plausibility of some of them, but keep in mind that they're designed to entertain kids. And they were a bit funny.Overall, this is just your standard kids movie. Moms and dads will undoubtedly fall asleep, but little kids are going to have a blast.