The Family Plan movie review & film summary (2023)

After fending off assassins all the way from New York to Nevada, but always in a way that everyone but the baby misses, the Morgans finally get to the City of Sin, and while I’m willing to suspend some disbelief to help a dumb comedy like this work, Dan leaving his kids, including the baby, to go out to a nice dinner with Jessica, is literally insane. Of course, the Morgans get separated, McCaffrey finds them, and everyone learns the truth.

Again, Mark Wahlberg could totally make something like this work. He’s got that wide-eyed puppy dog thing that makes him work as a conservative family man and yet he’s also believable as a former assassin. The always-underutilized Monaghan can do this kind of thing in her sleep and does even find a few beats to add depth to Jessica as a housewife who misses her spontaneous youth. (Speaking of wasted performers, Maggie Q does a lot with very little here as a new friend of Jessica’s with obvious ill intentions.) And props to Zoe Colletti, who’s charming in a relatively thankless daughter role.

No one on-screen is to blame for the failure of “The Family Plan.” They’re all fine, but they’re swimming upstream against a script that doesn’t give them enough to do and a director who fails at blending an average family and uncommon action into one vision. The movie ends on a few beats that are shockingly violent, including gunfire in a crowded Vegas casino and a death involving a dirty diaper that will haunt my dreams. It’s another indication that no one really figured out what movie to make here—a family comedy, spy thriller, or some blend of the two. So they chose none of the above. 

On Apple TV+ now.

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