The Spy Next Door
Jackie Chan's only movie aimed directly at kids, rather than families. It features Billy Ray Cyrus and George Lopez, Amber Valleta (as Gillian) from Gamer and The Transporter 2 and three kids. Thankfully, later in the same year (2010), Chan made The Karate Kid, a much better film.
It follows Bob Ho (Chan), a CIA agent who wishes to retire so that he could spend more time with his girlfriend, Gillian, who lives next door, and her three kids, Nora, Farren, and Ian. When Gillian goes away to visit her father in the hospital, Bob agrees to babysit the children. Hilarity Ensues. However, a terrorist plot threatens to put the entire family, and the world, in danger.
- Action Hero Babysitter
- Actor Allusion: Scenes of other Jackie Chan films are shown at the start, and Jackie makes a reference to his real life career in which he states he was an orphan living with non-blood "brothers" who stuck up to each other. In truth, not an orphan but was left at an academy of opera by his parents for 10 years. Not to mention, at one brief scene a DVD copy of Rush Hour is seen.
- The name "Chon Wang" from Shanghai Noon was intended to sound like Western icon John Wayne - now Jackie stars in a comedy as "Bob Ho".
- Billy Ray Cyrus brings with him Hannah Montana-level Malapropers.
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"He's as gone as the rum cake at an AA meeting!" |
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- Almost Kiss Bob and Gillian almost kiss in the beginning but Gillian interrupts with "We got an audience", referencing the kids.
- Bilingual Bonus: Bob singing lullabies to Nora in Chinese. Doubles as The Cast Showoff due to Jackie Chan's classically-trained and seldom-used singing pipes.
- Cut Lex Luthor a Check: the oil eating bacteria would be very useful in the Gulf of Mexico or some other major oil spill - or as a slimming product.
- Disappeared Dad Farren's father by blood, who abandoned her, leaving her with Gillian.
- Everything's Better with Bob
- Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting: Every single villain knows martial arts.
- Everyone Owns a Mac
- Harmless Villain: The main villain is more of a comical character than anything, not doing anything to pose as scary. Would qualify as Laughably Evil if his 'jokes' were actually funny.
- Hey, It's That Guy!: Poldark (the bad guy) is Sportacus.
- I'm a Humanitarian: Ian feds leftover bacon to their pet pig.
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Farren: "Okay, that's just wrong." |
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- The Mole: George Lopez' character turns out to be a villain near the end.
- Mundane Utility: Bob gets a mini-flamethrower, which he uses to heat up the toast and bacon.
- The Nudifier: Family-friendly variant as the oil-eating bacteria only consumes the Dark Chick's shoes.
- Rule of Funny: Though every Jackie Chan movie fight scene is under this category, there's also a scene in which Bob tosses a small kid no older than 5 up in the air extremely high, and she lands into her clothes. Of course, if you are to do this in real life, it would be child abuse and there's a 99.9% chance the child will die. Unless you're Jackie Chan doing it.
- Running Gag: the freshly-sprung main villain going through one lousy outfit to replace his Institutional Apparel after another.
- Secret Identity: Chan's character, Bob Ho, is a secret spy disguising himself as a pen importer.
- Something Only They Would Say: Bob susses out a spy by saying something Russian.
- Stock Footage: Again, with using scenes of Jackie Chan's older films (including a scene from Armor of God) at the start to introduce him as a martial arts badass spy.
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: A single mom leaves her three annoying children with her boyfriend, who they hate very much. What could go wrong!? Of course, Hilarity Ensues.
- Attempted Hilarity Ensues.