If you were a kid with a tendency for getting in trouble, wouldn’t you want Jackie Chan as your next-door neighbor? That’s the idea, at least, behind The Spy Next Door, Chan’s next action-comedy vehicle to be directed by Brian Levant, the guy behind middling family comedies like Are We There Yet? and Snow Dogs.
Variety reports that the screenwriters will be Jonathan Bernstein and Jim Greer, who are responsible for middling comedies themselves, like Just My Luck and Max Keeble’s Big Move. Really, Chan seems to be the single non-mediocre element here, and at least his role will let him show off his action skills. He plays a man babysitting for the neighbor’s children who is forced to fight off special agents when one of the children, naturally, sets off a national security crisis. You know how kids are these days.
Given the track record of everyone involved—including, sadly, Chan himself—it doesn’t seem worth expecting much from this. But hey, there’s nothing wrong with introducing the kids to Chan’s skills, so when you yourself wind up babysitting at some point in the future, you’ll know which random kid’s movie will be a slightly better bet.
