Playing with Fire Plays it Safe
Upon its release Playing with Fire was largely dismissed by critics as not worthy of their time. It’s as if these critics had no idea that the movie they were watching was made for the whole family but primarily for kids. Is it a silly movie? Check. Is it even a preposterous movie Check. Does it strain an adults ability to suspend disbelief? No, it doesn’t. It is, from the get go, an implausible story and a predictable one in that implausibility, but amid all its silliness and absurdity is a charming cast who manage to bring plenty of laughs throughout.
John Cena stars as Superintendent Jake Carson “Supe”, the leader of a group of smoke jumpers. Smoke jumpers are the elite fire fighters who are dropped by helicopter into the heart of wildfires in the California woods. Cena is not much of an actor but has enough charisma but producers Todd Garner and Sean Robbins wisely cast Keegan-Micheal Key (Captain Mark Rogers) and John Leguizamo (Rodrigo Torres) as more than capable bookends to help Cena look good. Beside them is the largely silent Tyler Mane as “Axe.
The quartet of super firefighters wind up saving a trio of kids from a burning cabin in the woods. The children’s parents are nowhere to be seen and circumstances compel Supe to take the children back to the depot of which the firefighters reside. The eldest of the children is a teenager Brynn (Brianna Hildebrand), an adolescent Will (Christian Convery), and a little girl Zoey (Finley Rose Slater). The little girl is, of course, adorable and the adolescent boy is charming and it’s nice to see Hildebrand playing sweet without it being ironic or sardonic.
The quartet of smoke jumpers soon learn that these three children are actually foster kids who’ve run away from Child Protective Services. Implausibly and even against what has already been an established part of Cena’s character, he agrees to postpone turning the kids over to CPS until they’ve all had a chance to celebrate Zoey’s upcoming Birthday. A good writer will take implausibilities and make them seem plausible. Unfortunately screenwriters Dan Ewen and Matt Leiberman are no where near that good, but it isn’t the screenplay that makes this film enjoyable. It’s the cast.
Rounding out this likable cast is Supe’s love interest Dr. Amy Hicks played by a delightfully giddy Judy Greer, and Dennis Haysbert as the smoke jumpers Commander Richards. A year, almost to the date before the release of Playing with Fire was the release of the Mark Whalberg led Instant Family which was a far more plausible tale of the same nature. That film is no doubt superior to Playing with Fire, and a movie for the whole family that is inclined to appeal to the parents watching the film with their kids more than than the Cena led movie, but I’m guessing the silliness of the later is probably more appealing to the kids.
Maybe, given that both are now on DVD or can be streamed, parents might want to take up this challenge and watch both as a double feature and take note of which one the kids seem to like better. While Instant Family has plenty of laugh out loud moments too many of them are jokes for adults. Conversely, the pratfalls and shtick that Playing with Fire relies on so heavily may generate plenty of eye-rolls from the adults, if I’m right and the kids delight at these shenanigans how can adults not delight in the delight of the kids?
Where Instant Family was a comedy that tends to be much more realistic in the trials and tribulations of taking in foster children and going through the turmoil and bureaucracy of adoption, Playing with Fire reduces all of that to childish fantasy because that is who the movie is geared towards; children. Silliness abounds and I suppose if a film critic isn’t in a very good mood while watching all of this silliness, it might very well be unbearable to watch. Apparently I was in the right kind of mood to forgive the nonsense and just enjoy the silliness and the many laugh out loud moments woven in between.