Reviewed By: Flickman
After watching The Family Plan 2, I realized I barely remember the first one, which honestly probably says everything about it. I’m sure I enjoyed it in the moment, but it clearly didn’t leave much of a mental footprint. And guess what? The sequel follows that exact legacy. This is absolutely a “turn your brain off and accept the nonsense” kind of movie. And trust me, the nonsense is coming. Oh boy, is it coming.
Let’s start with something simple: the IMDB description. It’s wrong. Completely wrong. It looks like they just copied and pasted the plot of the first movie, which means according to IMDB, this film still takes place in Las Vegas and still involves being chased across the country by deadly enemies. Nope. Not even close. Zero Vegas. Zero cross-country chase. Zero deadly enemies pursuing them. Great job, IMDB.
Anyways…The Family Plan 2 is actually about the Morgan family trying to spend Christmas together. Instead of their daughter flying home from overseas, they decide to take the holidays to London, which just so happens to be where Dan (Mark Wahlberg) has a security job testing a bank’s defenses. Perfect timing, right? Two birds, one stone, what could possibly go wrong? Well… everything. Dan gets set up for a bank robbery by a long-lost brother he didn’t know existed (Finn), who not only wants to steal their father’s empire but also wants Dan dead. Family bonding at its finest.
Now, nothing about this movie is particularly great. It has car chases, shootouts, explosions, all the required ingredients, but most of it is completely unbelievable. And that is where the flaws start piling up like Jenga blocks.
First off: the fight scenes. If Dan used to be an assassin (a fact from the first film), why does he fight like he only sometimes remembers that? Half the time he can take down a guy with a wrist flick, and the other half he struggles, especially by Finn, who has basically zero training (or at least none that we are aware of). There’s one fight scene on a bus that is shockingly bad. You’ll know it when you see it so I won’t share that complete disaster.
Then there’s the getaway car situation. Everyone is trying to escape while Dan is roofied: the mom who knows how to drive stick, the older daughter, the daughter’s boyfriend Omar – all perfectly decent candidates to get behind the wheel. So who actually drives? The younger son and least qualified person. Of course. Why? Who freakin’ knows.
Let’s talk about the bank robbery scene for a second… Dan’s wife Jessica (Michelle Monaghan) is released from the kidnappers with a gun taped to her hand (for… some reason?), and with cops basically standing close enough to smell their breath, she and Dan just run. Like, literally run away as if it were the plan all along. And somehow they escape a handful of officers by jogging down an alley. I swear, these must be the most incompetent police officers in the entire world. They supposedly just robbed a bank, and escaping was easier than leaving a Costco parking lot on a Saturday.
And then comes the finale. Oh dear lord, the finale. Dan and Omar parkour their way onto the roof of Dan’s childhood mansion to destroy servers containing incriminating info about his past. While they’re up there, Dan tells Omar, “Take out the camera.” And Omar, in a brilliant tactical move, simply rotates the camera to face another direction. That’s it. That’s his whole plan. He does this multiple times. Meanwhile, the villains are inside watching the camera feeds and somehow don’t notice that every camera is suddenly pointing somewhere else. Sure. Why not. At this point, the movie had already given up on logic, so I guess we were supposed to as well.
I could list more problems, plenty more, but I’ll leave you the pleasure of discovering those gems yourself.
Despite all the ridiculousness, the movie did manage to keep me entertained. The acting was so-so, the humor barely landed, and the story was held together with loose tape, but it still wasn’t painful to watch. That’s probably because I generally like Wahlberg and Monaghan. If the leads had been anyone else, this would’ve been a disaster.
So if you liked the first one, you’ll probably have a good enough time with this. If you don’t remember the first one, though, maybe give it a rewatch, otherwise some of the character relationships might feel confusing. But if you want a mindless, mildly amusing action-comedy to fill an evening, this one checks the box. Just don’t expect it to be even remotely believable.
Overall Verdict: It's watchable brainless entertainment. While unrealistic in every possible way, still a decent film to kill some time. If you enjoyed the first one, you'll probably like this as well.
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