Here’s how I imagine the pitch meeting went for the movie G-Force:
Exec #1 - “So I have this idea for a Disney Channel Original Movie. We have these guinea pigs, see, but they’re not just guinea pigs, they’re actually aspiring special agents in the FBI and the use all of this high-tech equipment to…”
Exec #2 - “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let me get this straight; you’re talking about making a movie with super-spy, secret agent guinea pigs.”
Exec #1 - “Uh, yes.”
Exec #2 - “And you want it to be a made-for-TV movie on the Disney Channel.”
Exec #1 - (getting nervous) “Well, yes, I thought…”
Exec #2 - “Well you thought wrong.”
Exec #1 - (nervously sweating) “I did?”
Exec #2 - “Yes. This is a merchandising gold mine! Cute, furry little creatures that use all sorts of high-tech spy gear to save the world. Can you imagine all the merchandising tie-ins we could do if this was a feature film? Kids love cute animals. Kids love cool spy gear. The possibilities are endless!”
Exec #1- “Well, it’s really more of a TV type story…”
Exec #2 - “Right, and we’ll put it on the big screen. Oh, and we’ll do it in 3-D. Oh, and we’ll get celebrity voices for the guinea pigs. Get me Nic Cage on the line. Nic, how do you feel about being a rodent…”
And thus I believe G-Force in 3-D made it to your local theaters. Yes, it has cute little guinea pigs who are actually tough special agent wannabes for the FBI. Yes, it has cool, high-tech spy gear. Yes, it has the requisite butt jokes all kids’ movies apparently must have. Yes, it has car chases and robots and every cliche from the secret-agent-super-spy genre. And yes, it still feels like a Saturday morning, Disney Channel made-for-TV movie special that should have never come to the big screen. But it has cute animals and cool gadgets, and what marketing department could pass that opportunity up?
I will say this for G-Force: it stays firmly within family-friendly territory. Aside from the butt jokes and some very mild playful innuendo among the guinea pigs (as weird as that sounds), this might as well have been a Saturday morning cartoon.
Exec #2 - “Brilliant idea. A Saturday morning cartoon spin-off. Get me the Buena Vista animation department on the line… What do you mean we closed them down?”
Will you get out of here so I can do my review? Anyway, G-Force is silly, innocent fluff that even delivers a wholesome message to kids about believing in self and understanding that no matter who you are, you are special. It’s a good message, but the movie never really explains why kids should feel the are special. It’s easy to understand why the guinea pigs learn this lesson because after all they can talk, use computers, drive, know kung-fu, and they save the world. But what about the rest of us? What makes us special?
I was proud to hear my seven-year old daughter answer that question. “We’re special because God loves us, he made us in his image, and he sent Jesus to die for us.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. Think about that for a moment. You are so special to God, the God of the entire Universe and creator of all things, that he sent his son to give his life in order to save yours. You are that special. You are that loved. There isn’t another creature in the entire Universe (not even talking guinea pigs) that make that claim of being so special that God died and rose from the dead in their place. So yes, we are all special, and we’re special precisely because God loves us.
Exec #2 - “That seems a little preachy. We’ll just leave the ’special’ stuff in. It’s nice and mushy and ambiguous while still inspiring. We don’t need the rest.”
Yeah right, you do that. As for the rest of G-Force, well it was mostly forgettable, even in 3-D. The music is generic and annoying, the story is cliched and predictable, the characters are cute and fuzzy but paper thin. It’s not that any of it is bad necessarily, it’s just simple, cheesy fun that really feels like it was intended as a made-for-TV movie. Even the celebrity voices don’t help raise the bar much. You won’t recognize Nic Cage (most likely), and while the rest from Jon Favreau to Tracy Morgan do fine jobs they don’t have a lot to work with.
I’m sure someone thought that G-Force had a lot of potential, and it does. However, there isn’t anything here that lives up to its full potential beyond cute animals and cool gadgets. Toss in robots to entice the Transformers crowd, explosions, action, romance and what I suppose was humor (although I didn’t hear a lot of people laughing), and you have a hodgepodge of stuff that comes across as mediocre but offenseless mild fun. This would have made a fun TV movie, but paying for it on the big screen in 3-D isn’t worth it. Wait for it to show on TV, where it belongs.
