I watched (most of) this just out of morbid curiosity than anything else. When Mattel makes a movie I am not expecting any sort of grand display of anything other than visual effects and that is kind of what this movie is.
I quite like John Cena too and even though this entire film is total dogshit, he does a very good job. I would really like to see that guy take on more serious roles.
While Cena's personal payday for this movie has not been disclosed I am sure it is in the $10 million range. This is why Cena, who is capable of it, probably doesn't pursue more serious roles. Why would you when you can bring home that bacon making what is essentially the same film every time?
Barbie was a shock hit that made nearly $1.5 billion globally, so I can understand why Mattel would pursue trying to make lightning strike twice. However, I think they knew that this was not going to be like that and outside of very limited showings, this film wasn't even in most theaters.
For one thing, Barbie was a good film because it took place in a fictional and humorous world of the dolls whereas with Matchbox, the only relationship that we have to the car brand is that these 4 childhood friends really like Matchbox toy cars. There is no magical mystique that ties in the toys to the film. Then again, how could they do that? Have everyone get shrunk down in a "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" sort of fashion? I suppose that would have been worse.
Instead of having a good tie in to the toy product we have Sean (Cena) who has left behind his group of middle-school friends and over the years apart he has become a super-secret one-man-army working for the CIA. When he has a chance encounter with his friends at a mentor's funeral, he ends up getting them all kidnapped and his role as a secret agent is revealed.
Up to this point things are actually still ok although it is really stupid how these people, who are basically dead weight, manage to not cock up his operations any more than they do.
Instead of all of his friends getting almost immediately killed due to their total lack of combat experience, Sean is able to bring them up to special-agent level of expertise in basically a couple of days. It's completely ridiculous and it gets really annoying.
Also, there is some DEI stuff thrown in there and I guess they just can't help themselves. Let's not revert on this Hollywood, please? You are sealing your own fate by still doing this tired bullcrap.
The mission is as nonsensical as can be imagined and the way that Sean converts his hapless friends into being amazing assets for secret missions so rapidly is just embarrassing to watch.
The pinnacle of this idiocy is when at the charge of some ultra wealthy benefactor they are given free access to a large garage of vehicles of all types and given their choice of whatever they want. Of course they all choose what their favorite Matchbox toy was when they were 10 years old. This includes having advanced knowledge that was never brought up before in the plot of driving powerful motorcycles, tow trucks, and a helicopter.
It's wildly stupid and might appeal to children in some capacity but to any adult looking for some level of realism, this is just completely asinine.
"Matchbox: as pointless as a film based on a toy car could be"
Those are the words of The Guardian and I totally agree.
Barbie lacked realism as well but it included a magical world that was still not very believable as it overlapped with our own, but at least it had the good idea of being a coherent story driven by fantasy but still driven by something. In Matchbox everyone involved simply has the skills necessary for whatever because the plot calls for it.
Now for the upside: John Cena looks fantastic in this film. His acting is pretty great considering the rubbish nature of the story, and his hairline looks amazing (thanks transplants!)
Should I watch it ?
I'm gonna give this an emphatic hell-to-the-no. They toned this down to get a PG rating and by doing so removed all potential edge to it. They also have a sort of sexual "inclusivity" angle built in there that many parents might find inappropriate, which is something I cannot really understand about ratings boards these days. I don't care to say any more about that because I don't want to get into an argument with people. You'll know what I am talking about because it is the only relationship they really focus heavily on, which kind of says to me that there is some level of indoctrination going on here.
That aside, this film is objectively bad and I think there is a reason why Mattel decided not to roll this out en masse to theaters. I would imagine that it will do well in Asia, because all films of this sort tend to. This might be exactly what they were aiming for.
For everyone else though I think this film will fail to hold your interest outside of the first 15 minutes. It's just too ridiculous to enjoy IMO.
