Back in Action may be the name of the latest release on Netflix’s 2025 schedule, but it’s also a pretty accurate assessment on both of its stars. The spy comedy is Cameron Diaz’s first film in a decade after she turned down everything but her wine business,. Additionally, production was paused for a bit until Jamie Foxx was able to settle back in after his 2023 health scare. So was it worth the wait to see the reunion between these two (who previously appeared in Any Given Sunday and 2014’s Annie)? Critics screened the movie ahead of its January 17 release, and they’ve got some pretty brutal reactions.
Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx play ex-CIA agents who are forced to return to their super secret ways after having their identities exposed. The Back in Action trailer makes it look like we’re in for a fun and hilarious time, so should you be firing up that Netflix subscription to check this one out this weekend? Jim Vorel of Paste says maybe not, rating it a 5.0 out of 10. While the stunt work and choreography are pretty slick, the script is stuck in the past, the critic writes, continuing:
Back in Action functions modestly well as a welcome back to the screen for Cameron Diaz, who is still capable of being as charming today as she ever may have been. It even functions decently well as an action movie for the specific, too-narrow frames of time where Diaz and Foxx are thrashing wave after wave of nameless mooks–whoever the choreographer and stunt coordinators are here, they’ve done the heaviest lifting of anyone on the project. But the film feels absolutely threadbare in all other dimensions, not even trusting its audience to appreciate the solid fisticuffs it’s bringing to the party and seemingly believing that viewers in 2025 need a little James Brown in order to register that an action scene is meant to have an ironic undercurrent.
Taylor Gates of Collider rates it a 4 out of 10, saying Back in Action is “too formulaic to be fun,” and it struggles in tone as too adult to engage a younger audience but too kid-friendly to be considered one of Netflix’s sexiest movies. Gates says:
The last thing a movie like Back in Action should be is boring, but the spy plot is so comically simplistic, generic, and unengaging that there’s no real excitement or surprise to be had as far as the story goes. You can see every line and twist coming from a mile away, and there’s never any sense of real stakes or danger. Even the action sequences — which are competent and even occasionally impressive, especially the fight choreography — can’t distract from the lackluster story at its core. We’ve seen all of these beats numerous times, making for a tedious watch that feels much longer than its two-hour runtime.
Nick Schager of The Daily Beast agrees the upcoming 2025 movie is a “major letdown,” saying no one was asking it to reinvent the wheel, but the “overwhelming banality of its every element is tough to stomach.” Harsh! Schager continues:
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.
Christian Zilko of IndieWire grades it a C- and says Back in Action is as generic as they come. However, even with its simple premise and predictable twist, Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx each making a comeback in their own way adds an undeniable layer of interest. In Zilko’s words:
All of which is to say that preexisting goodwill makes Back in Action more watchable than it has any right to be. The uninspired script drags in all the wrong places and the set pieces fail to dazzle, ensuring that the film succeeds as neither an action movie nor a comedy. But Foxx and Diaz would have been charismatic and attractive enough to carry the film on their shoulders under normal circumstances, and the fact that the film is hitting Netflix after we faced the prospect of never seeing them act again covers a multitude of creative sins.
Critics and audiences seem to agree with the above assessments, too, with Back in Action sporting middling scores on Rotten Tomatoes as it hits Netflix — one of the best streaming services — on January 17. Accumulated critics have rated it 58%, while the audience’s Popcornmeter is slightly lower at 50%. The action-comedy is available to stream now.
