{"id":147210,"date":"2025-11-21T23:32:14","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T23:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/147210\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T23:32:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T23:32:14","slug":"the-family-plan-2-movie-review-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/147210\/","title":{"rendered":"The Family Plan 2 movie review (2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"

On its release in December 2023, \u201cThe Family Plan<\/a>\u201d became the most-watched film in the history of Apple TV+, a record broken a year later by \u201cWolfs<\/a>,\u201d also a bad movie. The success of that truly bland piece of filmmaking has brought us to the launch of \u201cThe Family Plan 2,\u201d an even-worse study in lazy filmmaking, aggressively unfunny clich\u00e9s, and bland action sequences. It\u2019s such a non-movie that it actually becomes difficult to review because there\u2019s so little to hold onto that it dissipates from memory while you\u2019re watching it. There are no laughs. The plot is inane. The action choreography is insulting. It is such a lifeless piece of product creation (not filmmaking) that even writing about it feels like a waste of time, much less watching it.<\/p>\n

Director Simon Cellan Jones returns for his third consecutive film with Mark Wahlberg<\/a> (\u201cArthur the King<\/a>\u201d was crammed in the middle of what is now \u201cThe Family Plan\u201d franchise) as Dan Morgan, who we learned in the first film was not just an ordinary car salesman in Buffalo. At least the first film had a place in the surprisingly popular genre of \u201cordinary dad assassin,\u201d but that \u201cNobody<\/a>\u201d-esque twist (or \u201cTrue Lies<\/a>\u201d for Gen X-ers) is gone here, and nothing of substance has replaced it. Everyone in Dan\u2019s life knows he used to be a killer who worked for his evil father. Dad is dead now, and Dan works as a security specialist, but the biggest problem in his life is that his daughter Nina (Zoe Colletti) is studying overseas and his son Kyle (Van Crosby) would rather play video games than hang out with his parents. He just wants the family to be together for the holidays.<\/p>\n

An opportunity for family hijinks arises when Dan gets an outreach from a London bank to check their security systems, which sets in motion an absolutely ridiculous series of events that features the Morgans battling with Dan\u2019s estranged half-brother Aidan (Kit Harrington) across Europe. In a manner that defies logic, Aidan gets Dan to break into the bank and retrieve something that gives the villain access to his dad\u2019s network of assassins and his immense wealth, while also framing the Morgans for the robbery. Dan and Jessica (Michelle Monaghan<\/a>, so completely wasted in a non-part that you just want Ethan Hunt to swoop in and rescue her) race across London and Paris with their kids and Nina\u2019s new parkour-loving boyfriend Omar (Reda Elazouar). Why does he love parkour? Because it serves the plot\u2014a sequence in which Omar jumps rooftops and what\u2019s supposed to be Wahlberg leap across rooftops is one of several times that you\u2019ll question if the fifty-something actor could really do that.<\/p>\n

On that note, the action choreography has reached late-stage Neeson levels of not looking like actual combat. And, with no memorable action at all, what\u2019s left are the lame attempts at comedy, which all fall into the \u201cprotective dad\u201d bucket of shallow joke writing. Even the way that writer David Coggeshall and Jones use Europe is insulting with predictable needle drops (\u201cTubthumping\u201d in a pub, because of course) and tourist highlights that give the whole thing the sense that it\u2019s more likely taking place at Epcot than overseas.<\/p>\n

Wahlberg looks visibly bored, and the kids are caricatures, but it\u2019s fair to say that Harrington does try to bring a bit of character to his role as the estranged child who turned into a vengeful adult. He\u2019s the only one putting in any effort, but he can\u2019t battle a script that is so laughably unbelievable that it verges on parody. <\/p>\n

A few examples before this one is wiped from my memory. At one point, Dan says to the family that the code word for their upcoming operation is \u201cabort.\u201d Pretty sure that\u2019s just an instruction, Dan. Shortly thereafter, he\u2019s on a rooftop when a personality-less assassin gets a jump on him. A gun is in his face. Cut to Jessica, and a shot is heard. Cut back and the assassin is dead, and it doesn\u2019t look like Dan broke a sweat. He\u2019s just a killing magician. It\u2019s just one of many examples of screenwriting and production that does the bare minimum to push people from one dull plot point to another with no surprises, no laughs, and no tension.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking to unwind and take a nap this Thanksgiving, you don\u2019t need turkey. This will put you to sleep quicker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On its release in December 2023, \u201cThe Family Plan\u201d became the most-watched film in the history of Apple…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-147210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}