‘Back in Action’: Cameron Diaz’s Comeback Movie Is an Eye-Rolling Abomination

Ten years after she seemingly hung it up for good, Cameron Diaz returns to the big screen—or, at least, Netflix—with Back in Action, an action comedy that pairs her with her Annie co-star Jamie Foxx. She should have stayed retired.

A drearily formulaic comeback vehicle that’s been sitting on a shelf for nearly two years and boasts not a single original, amusing, or exciting moment, director Seth Gordon’s feature is a hodgepodge of the hoariest of clichés, none of which have been fresh since the 1980s and most of which have to do with underlining the fact that—no matter their entry into middle age—its stars remain as sexy, funny, and desirable as ever. Diaz and Foxx still got it, the film constantly screams. The evidence on display, however, suggests otherwise.

In an opening flashback, CIA agents Emily (Diaz) and Matt (Foxx) infiltrate a birthday party for a terrorist’s son in order to procure a magical digital key that affords control of every techno-system imaginable. When they’re caught in the act, they’re forced to kick butt to the sounds of Nat King Cole’s “L-O-V-E”—the first of many instances in which the heroes’ exploits are scored to American classics because the juxtaposition is supposedly cute and Diaz and Foxx are old-school.

Complicating this mission is Emily’s discovery that she’s pregnant, and though things eventually go incredibly sideways, the two survive this assignment and commit to each other, with Matt proclaiming, “My favorite person is about to create my new favorite person.”

Matt and Emily will be no viewer’s favorite people, considering that they’re lame archetypes defined by smirky quips and bada-- poses. Fifteen years after the prologue, Emily and Matt are suburban parents to teens Alice (McKenna Roberts) and Leo (Rylan Jackson), and their household is a cheery place that’s darkened only by tensions between mother and daughter. Emily is sad that Alice doesn’t want to have movie nights together and is shocked when she learns that the girl’s computer password is “momsux.”

More startling is the revelation that Alice has lied about going to a friend’s house to study; instead, she’s at a nightclub with an older boyfriend. Upon arriving at the establishment to retrieve Alice, Emily and Matt are accosted by belligerent clubbing bros (sure, why not!) and are forced to fight, thereby confusing and humiliating Alice to no end.

When video of this outing hits the internet, Emily and Matt are visited by their old boss Chuck (Kyle Chandler), who informs them that their cover has been blown and that they’re in danger because rogues continue to covet the key. A terrorist attack sends them on the run, during which Matt admits to his wife that he held onto the valuable item and, in fact, hid it at the home of Emily’s mom Ginny (Glenn Close), a former globe-trotting spy whom Emily resents for being an absentee parent.

Moms and daughters are at odds throughout Back in Action, yet there’s no drama to Gordon and Brendan O’Brien’s script, which sets up these conflicts with the same lack of imagination that typifies their resolutions. If you’re expecting everyone to ultimately get in on the espionage fun and prove that covert ops are a family affair, you won’t be disappointed.

No one is asking Back in Action to reinvent the wheel but the overwhelming banality of its every element is tough to stomach, including its strained efforts to celebrate Diaz and Foxx as in their primes. Rival MI6 bigwig Baron (Andrew Scott) does little more than pine for Emily and express jealousy over Matt winning her heart, while a customs agent remarks that Matt is “proper fit.”

In repeated set pieces, they punch, kick, flip, and shoot like they’ve lost none of their John Wick-ian skills. And despite joking about coveting a night alone together so they can get some sleep (because, parenthood), their private moments are dominated by athletic sparring and hints of steamy sex. Foxx and Diaz share moderate chemistry, but the degree to which the film insists that its leads are crazy-sexy-cool is inversely proportional to what’s on display.

At her remote English estate, Ginny introduces her clan to much younger boyfriend Nigel (Jamie Demetriou), whose eagerness to join MI6 is matched by his awkward desire to establish himself as Alice and Leo’s grandfather. Demetriou’s bumbling routine is of a familiar sort but his weirdness is the sole spark in this otherwise dire venture, with the comedian delivering a few tossed-off one-liners that put the rest of the material’s repartee to shame.

Nonetheless, that’s not enough to make Back in Action tolerable, nor are the numerous sequences in which Emily and Matt do their sub-Jason Bourne thing while bantering about domestic issues. Much of the film’s humor is about parenting (“That’s how you raise great, well-rounded kids—by lying straight to their face”), although there are also a few generational-divide gags strewn throughout, as when Emily and Matt sing and dance along to Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It” on the way to dropping Alice and Leo off at school.

In total, all these bits make Back in Action feel designed by the Netflix algorithm to appeal to a highly particular fortysomething demographic that dreams of escaping their cluttered kid-dominated homes and recapturing some of their old, wild youth. That would be fine, of course, if the film wasn’t a clumsy hybrid of every other action comedy from the past four decades, right down to its unsurprising big twist, its milquetoast combat choreography, and its smushy reconciliations and affirmations.

It’s all so tired that it’s a wonder Gordon, Foxx, or anyone else involved managed to convince Diaz to participate. She acquits herself as well as possible given the circumstances, yet even she appears to grow somewhat exhausted by the proceedings’ shenanigans, all of which culminate at the Tate Modern for reasons that make no narrative sense but do illustrate the excessive money spent on this third-rate undertaking.

“There’s more than one way to screw up a kid,” says Matt at the outset of his and Emily’s adventure. Back in Action confirms that the same thing is true when it comes to comeback vehicles.