The Spy Next Door: Jackie Chan and Billy Ray Cyrus Compare Bad Hair

Colleen Hayes/Lionsgate

Chan tries to play romantic opposite Valletta.

Details

Opens at Woodinville and other theaters, Fri., Jan. 15. Rated PG. 92 minutes.

Related Content

• Ask a Mexican!
  February 29, 2012
• There's No Eating in Safe House, but Tobin Frost Would Appreciate Al Boccalino
  March 2, 2012
• Ask a Mexican!
  November 9, 2011
• How the CIA Celebrates Earth Day
  April 22, 2011
• The Man Nobody Knew: Secrets and Lies in Washington, D.C.
  November 30, 2011

More About

• Jackie Chan
• Billy Ray Cyrus
• Central Intelligence Agency
• Brian Levant
• George Lopez

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Like director Brian Levant's past two outings—2002's Snow Dogs and 2005's Are We There Yet?— Spy is immediately forgettable family entertainment, suitable for release only in the dung-heap month of January. Jackie Chan, game as ever, stars as Bob Ho, an undercover CIA agent from China posing as a sweater-vested pen importer who offers to mind the three kids (roughly 13, 9, and 4) of his Albuquerque next-door-neighbor sweetheart, Gillian (Amber Valletta), while she's away in Denver. When not preparing breakfast or shuttling his obnoxious new charges to school, Bob must also face Russian baddies hatching a petroleum plot, George Lopez as a mole, and, most alarmingly, CIA colleague Billy Ray Cyrus' bizarre, shellacked, middle-parted shag. Still immensely affable and eager, the aging action hero (Chan has two stunt doubles) seems not to mind the humiliation of sharing most of the movie with his exhaustingly hammy half-pint co-stars or unnecessary ESL cruelty: After apologizing to Cyrus' character for suspecting him in the plot, Bob is told, "Don't worry about it, buddy; chalk it up to the language barrier." The end-credits blooper reel reveals Chan blurting out "I hate English!"