G-Force (2009)

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Before I ever started this blog, I had considered G-Force to be the absolute worst theatrically-released live-action Disney film ever made! I knew I would eventually have to watch it again for this blog, even hinting at it in my Old Dogs review way back in 2013!

Now the time has come for me to finally rewatch G-Force! The question is though: will I still consider G-Force to be the worst theatrically-released live-action Disney film ever made? I know it definitely will be bad, but I’ve seen a lot of bad theatrically-released live-action Disney films since then, so will G-Force surprise me by not being the absolute bottom of the barrel?

Guess we’ll just havta find out! Read on for my review of G-Force!

And remember, SPOILERS AHEAD!

Directed by Hoyt Yeatman, the film begins with a special group of secret agents known as G-Force being sent to infiltrate the home of millionaire billionaire rich businessman, Leonard Saber, played by Bill Nighy.

However, G-Force isn’t your typical spy force! It comprises three guinea pigs, a mole, and a fly. The leader guinea pig is Darwin (voiced by Sam Rockwell) with the other two being Juarez and Blaster (voiced by Penélope Cruz and Tracy Morgan, respectively). Along with Mooch (vocalized by Dee Bradley Baker), they’re the field agents of the group. The mole, Speckles,  voiced by Nicolas Cage, is the behind-the-scenes tech guy and hacker.

They’ve been sent by their owners trainers bosses people, Dr. Ben Kendall, played by Zach Galifianakis, and his assistant, Marcie, played by Kelli Garner. Dr. Ben and Marcie have trained G-Force as spies (even utilizing technology that allows them to speak) for the FBI, but their program is currently under threat of being shut down. So to impress their FBI superiors, they’ve initiated this G-Force infiltration of Saber’s estate without explicit permission to do so.

Why is Saber being targeted? He’s famous for creating household appliances and is supposed to launch something called Clusterstorm in the near future. The FBI is suspicious that Clusterstorm is threatening and G-Force wants to download Saber’s Clusterstorm file from his laptop onto a flash drive as proof of its danger.

Darwin successfully manages to download the file and while he and the others are almost caught by Saber, they manage to retreat safely back to their warehouse headquarters.

Speckles tries to open the file, but apparently Darwin downloaded a virus file instead rather than the correct Clusterstorm file. Darwin is perplexed by this as he’s sure he downloaded the correct file. However, there’s no time to fix this mistake as Dr. Ben’s FBI superior, Kip Killian, played by Will Arnett, is coming over for a visit to inspect the program and decide if it needs to be shut down or not.

Long story short, he’s not impressed with the talking animals and he’s very upset that the Saber estate infiltration mission was launched without his authority. He wants to shut down the program and confiscate the G-Force animals, but Dr. Ben and Marcie manage to get the animals to escape where they end up in a pet shop.

The G-Force animals realize that they must escape the pet shop and reconvene back at the warehouse headquarters to be reunited with Dr. Ben and Marcie. Speckles tries to play dead so that he can be buried in the dirt, but is instead tossed in the trash and apparently crushed to death in the garbage truck!

The others are saddened by the loss of their colleague and are even more determined to escape. Mooch manages to fly away since he’s a fly. Blaster and Juarez manage to escape after being bought by a family while Darwin escapes along with an overweight pet shop guinea pig named Hurley, voiced by Jon Favreau, who thinks that he and Darwin are long-lost brothers due to sharing an identical birthmark. Darwin says there’s no way this is possible because he’s been genetically engineered as was the rest of the G-Force.

In the end, they all reconvene at the warehouse headquarters where Dr. Ben confesses that they weren’t genetically engineered. Instead they were all regular animals rescued by him and Marcie. This realization hits the squad hard, especially Darwin, but like 2 minutes later, they get over it.

As it’s the day when Saber is launching Clusterstorm, they decide to launch one more mission to infiltrate his estate and stop him. They’re a bit late though as Saber launches Clusterstorm on the say-so of his mysterious Japanese partner, Mr. Yanshu, whom he’s only communicated with via audio. While Clusterstorm is supposed to connect all Saber appliances to each other around the world, it instead turns the appliances into human-attacking machines! 

Saber is shocked by this as he had no idea that this would have happened! That’s when Darwin discovers that Mr. Yanshu is the real villain in this scheme and is shocked to discover who Mr. Yanshu really is!

Yep, Speckles was really Mr. Yanshu in disguise! He had a vendetta against humans ever since his family was exterminated by humans. He vowed to seek revenge and pretended to be Mr. Yanshu to launch his plan using Saber appliances. He is the one who corrupted the file that Darwin downloaded and he also didn’t die in the garbage truck incident.

Darwin and the others try to stop Speckles who fights them when they get in his way. But after some very weak persuading by Darwin about how they’re all a family along with Dr. Ben and Marcie, Speckles realizes the error of his ways and wants to stop Clusterstorm. He’s unable to end it though, but Darwin plugs in a virus-filled PDA into Speckles’ control center that shuts down Clusterstorm restoring all Saber appliances back to their normal states.

The aftermath of this event includes the FBI trying to clean up the mess as well as reinstating the G-Force program. Hurley joins the team as a rookie and Darwin, Juarez, and Blaster become official FBI agents. Speckles is punished by removing the Saber chip that’s in every Saber appliance so that something like this can’t happen again. He hopes to rejoin G-Force when he’s finished.

And that was G-Force! There’s not really that much to say; you kinda get what you expect to get from this movie! A positive note is that I no longer think it’s the absolute worst theatrically-released live-action Disney film ever made! It’s still very bad, but it’s not the absolute worst!

All the performances, both live-action and voice, in this film are exactly what you’d expect from an actor being told they’re acting in a film about guinea pig spies! The CGI sometimes is believable and sometimes isn’t.

I dunno, it’s G-Force! What else can I say?

So, my final score for this film is 18/35 = 51.43% (F) !

The next review will be posted on June 4, 2024.