The Family Plantakes a standard streaming movie concept and makes a standard streaming movie. Dan Morgan (Mark Wahlberg) is a car salesman and almost unbelievably meek husband who turns out to be a former secret agent on the run from death. It’s not a particularly original idea, nor is its execution anything noteworthy. It’s pretty predictable fare fromApple TV, whose cinematic output typically falls into two categories: Oscar contender, or beige action movie. The Family Plan will not be nominated for any Oscars.
Mark Wahlberg is the obvious hook here, and he does bring some gritty action pedigree if the film leaned into his crunchy presence. Unfortunately, to sell that he used to be a covert special ops agent, he has to beJohn Wick. Except he’s not John Wick, so what we get are a load of quick cuts in close-up action scenes that feel like a messy blur of nothingness. Whether in tight spaces or rooms, the only time they have any personality is the occasional bouts of comedy in the middle. Even then, like Dan being slammed up against a window just after his children look away, it’s not original laughs The Family Plan is getting, but tried and tested titters.
Then there’s the whole secret identity thing. Dan’s cover is blown early on, when he is attacked at a supermarket with his baby attached in a BabyBjorn. Later on, while on the road, he is chased by assassins and takes them out with a silencer while his family (aside from the baby, again) are all sleeping. Finally, he gets into a skirmish when he stops at his daughter’s prospective college and his family go off for a tour.
These are the only hints in the first hour and change that you’re watching an action movie. After his cover is blown, Dan takes the family to Las Vegas so he can procure new identities for them and tell him of his old life. But as he delays telling them - and not for any slapstick reasons, just his own cowardice - it becomes a movie about a family who take a road trip to Las Vegas and very little happens. They have small scale arguments that a bickering family might have, but mostly it’s a tension free vacation that occasionally pauses for a short fight scene, only for things to return to dullness very quickly.
If you wanted to be kind, you might call it ‘inoffensive’. If you wanted to be honest, you might reach for ‘bland’. And yet, at times it swings into extremes. This is a family action movie, the kind of safe movie you can watch over the holidays and keep most people happy. But one of the deaths is via a pierced, bloody eyeball shown in all its gory glory, and several f-bombs are dropped. I’m not the type to get offended by movies, and I’m not going to start with swear words in The Family Plan, but it seems like a very strange decision to move out of the ‘fun for the whole family’ edginess it cultivates to bring a forced coolness that fails to live up to other movies that push things much further and yet alienates the original audiences who might have been sold on it.
There’s also a large section dedicated to the video game Valorant, in one of the most obvious and insulting acts of product placement I’ve seen. Valkyrae and iiTzTimmy appear in the movie as themselves, and whenI spoke to Valkyrae ahead of the movie’s release, she praised the movie’s authentic use of video games and its positivity. I’m inclined to agree, but taking a substantial chunk out of the movie to show the son playing in a Valorant tournament felt like fishing for the teen boy demographic (did the producers not feel an action movie could bank on that?), as well as a hackneyed advert.
Through it all though, the cast is very charming. It may be treading water with its slow pacing and lack of intrigue, but the chemistry of the cast keeps it from drowning. Compared to Ghosted, another of Apple’s beige action flicks, The Family Plan is a clear cut above. Though Michelle Monaghan feels underused as Dan’s bored wife, Zoe Colletti and Van Crosby as the children hold their own as both siblings and with their general lack of respect for Dan. However, it’s in the final act where the movie finally establishes itself. It’s too little, too late, but there was a core of potential here.
The finale introduces Ciaran Hinds and his shady connection to Dan, and he cuts a menacing figure as with action finally gets a prolonged spotlight. It’s still a little cliche and tries to be John Wick (which means trying to cover up all the ways it falls short, too), but the comedy is a bit fresher here, and we’re less sure of where it’s all going. It’s not enough to save the movie, but it’s enough that some people will put it in the ‘hits’ of Apple’s hit and miss streaming output.
The Family Plan is a family action movie that sometimes loses sight of the fact it’s supposed to be a family movie or an action movie. The fight scenes are subpar and most of the story is predictable and slow, but the chemistry is there and the ending is a cut above the road it takes to get there. Just be prepared to sit through a Valorant commercial in the middle.
