Cameron Diaz decision to walk away from Hollywood in 2018 when she was one of the highest-paid stars in movies was met with some surprise.
While she was no Meryl Streep, and was probably never going to trouble the Oscars shortlist (although she did have Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations under her belt), she had cornered the market on likeable but tough and funny girl next door roles. A gifted physical comedy actress her perfomance in There’s Something About Mary is still parodied today thanks to one very famous hair gel scene.
She also dabbled in dramatic roles in 1999’s Being John Malkovich and 2001’s Vanilla Sky opposite Tom Cruise.
Therefore when she announced in 2022 she was making a comeback, teaming up with Jamie Foxx for a Netflix action adventure called Back In Action people, including me, were naturally expecting great things.
I was hugely disappointed to discover that her much hyped and lauded return to screen was just… okay. Obviously I wasn’t expecting Citizen Kane, but I assumed for her to backtrack on her retirement plans it would take a very special project.
I was wrong. While this is an entertaining popcorn flick Back In Action is nothing we haven’t seen before. Part True Lies, part Mr and Mrs Smith and part Spy Kids it ticks all the action movie boxes, like the fast food of movies leaving you unsatisfied an hour after watching.
The plot is pretty rote. Cameron and Jamie, who have prevously worked together on Any Given Sunday and a (very ill thought out) remake of Annie, reuinte to play CIA spies Emily and Matt who go to ground and assume new identities to live a regular life and raise a family.
Predictably, years later their past endeavours come back to haunt them and they are sucked back into the world of international espionage with their children in tow.
Along the way they are forced to reconect wth Emily’s estranged MI6 agent mother played by Glenn Close, who adds a huge amount of gravitas to this.
Indeed the cast list is extremly impressive and also includes Fleabag’s sexy priest Andrew Scott and Friday Night Lights star Kyle Chandler. Cameron and Jamie have a wonderful chemistry and it is impossible not to like them as a big screen couple.
There are also plenty of huge set pieces to keep action fans happy, including a very impressive scene on an aeroplane minutes into the movie. I couldn’t help feeling these would look great in the cinema. However, even on my very large television they lost something and depending on you home cinema set up you may not get the full beneift of these moments.
Overall it is entertaining. But also forgettable. It is a pleasant enough way to kill an hour and 54 minutes but not appointment viewing and it won’t be remembered as a classic. Cameron’s character is basically just an older and wiser version of her Charlie’s Angels role.
When silent movie star Gloria Swanson came out of retirement to play Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard she was Oscar nominated. When Judy Garland made her return to screens after a four year break from films with A Star Is Born she was also Oscar nominated. Daniel Day-Lewis has retired many times, but when he took a step back for the first time back in 1997 to become a shoe-maker he returned to star in Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York in 2003. He too was Oscar nominated.
Given that all these stars carefully chose prestige projects for their comeback it is somewhat disappointing Cameron didn’t hold out for a project we would all be talking about which would fully restore her star status.