Playing With Fire

Playing With Fire

Directed by Andy Flickman

Please enjoy this review for a somehow child-friendly film about the devastating California wildfires. Before we get into this I want to dedicate this review to my patient and lovely wife, Maria, who took it upon herself to see this movie with me. You really took one for the team here, and I appreciate it. Now, Playing With Fire. It’s a movie. It has John Cena. I watched it while chugging beer in an otherwise empty movie theater at noon on a Saturday. Let’s talk about how that went. I would say it hurt us but that would mean that it had some kind of lasting effect and that certainly isn’t true. My brain is ejecting it from my memories as I write this so I have to speed this up and get to the actual movie. 

Be Scared…But Not Too Scared!

Our film begins with a rescue sequence of a group of people trapped and about to burn to death in a California wildfire, a scene that is certainly not scarring to the many many people in constant danger from real-life wildfires. They must have known how tasteless this was because the bit actors shouting “Oh no we are trapped!” Were as emotionless as they could be in the face of their impending doom, and they were probably directed not to act too scared, lest the audience realizes how messed up this opening is.


Our Heroes(?)

After this flawless rescue, half of John Cena’s smokejumpers “quit” to join another hotshot smoke jumper’s team. Which doesn’t make any sense because they’re all government employees and were probably stationed here on orders? Wouldn’t they have to apply for reassignment to not leave this station understaffed? Forget it, I won’t put more thought into this than the writers did. They all leave so our cast is now John Cena playing John Cena, John Leguizamo playing a twitchy ex-con with a love of Spam, Keegan-Michael Key absolutely slumming it as a sycophant to John Cena who has to read embarrassingly bad lines, and a random intimidating man playing a random intimidating man with an ax.

Wacky Fire Rescue Hijinks

Our group is then immediately called on to rescue a group of children from a lake house that is currently in the path of a horrible California wildfire, the funniest situation I can possibly think of. On the way over, our heroes take water from a protected lake or pond or something, much to the chagrin of a lady scientist who definitely won’t fall in love with John Cena at some point and then continues on, arriving at the scene of the fire and getting into wacky slapstick during the rescue. “Wait,” you might say, “wacky slapstick isn’t funny during a fire rescue. That’s really serious, if they screw up everyone could burn to death, and that’s nearly universally regarded as the worst way to die.” Oh…it sounds like anyone who isn’t a Hollywood producer knows that. Moving right along.

There Is No Reason For This Plot To Exist

After rescuing the children, who as earlier were not allowed to act scared while their house was literally on fire around them so as not to freak out the audience, they are all taken back to the station where John Cena must care for them because their group are first responders and the children’s parents are not available. Okay well, this shouldn’t be a problem. Just let the kids hang out and watch TV or play a game or something, get pizza or whatever and then hand them over to their parents. Simple stuff. Unfortunately, it is not simple. Because John Cena hates children so much that he refuses to let children, whose home literally just burned down mind you, sit in his recliner. Not for any reason, mind you, they just can’t.

Wacky Firehouse Shenanigans

The whole rest of the movie is like that. Plot points that should be intensely easily resolved are stretched to their breaking point in an attempt to get any kind of laugh. The kids immediately get into dangerous shenanigans that probably could have been easily avoided if John Cena just let them watch TV, like when a child: plays with flare guns and shoots them; gets peanut butter on a truck and then tries to clean it off with industrial paint thinner and concentrated soap, knocking over a huge rack that could have easily fallen on him in the process; gets John Leguizamo to take him into the ‘fire simulator’ box and then abandon him; and so on. These children are in needless peril so frequently I can only imagine how stressful this movie would be as an actual parent.


Very Current Pop Culture References!

Another bizarre thing is this movie’s obsession with pop culture that is slightly out of date, with references that may have been relevant a few years ago but are now not exactly hip. The opening song is Uptown Funk. The show ‘My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic’ is featured heavily. And when I say heavily I mean heavily. There’s an MLP party where they paint the whole station to be MLP themed, there’s an MLP cake, John Cena wears a crop top with Princess Celestia on it. If I’m not mistaken, isn’t ‘Friendship is Magic’ over now? Why so heavily feature a show that’s ended? I have no answers to these questions.


A Romance No One Could Possibly Care About

Back to that scientist. Early in the film, the smokejumpers raise the ire of a local scientist whose job it is to monitor a particular species of toad who makes the local lake their home by taking water from this lake which is federally protected. To this end, she brings over a pledge to the station and says they must sign a pledge to not take water from that lake anymore, which should have been an order given that they’re all government employees. I’m sure that it was all very exciting for you to read. It was waaaaaaay more exciting to see that play out! The only reason I bring this up is to point out 2 things. The first is that a running joke is that everyone misidentifies the ‘toads’ as ‘frogs’, which is hilarious (sarcasm alert: no it’s not). And the second is that she is solely here to give John Cena a bland love interest he eventually marries offscreen SPOILER ALERT.


I Must Now Hang My Head In Shame

There’s a twist but I don’t care nearly enough to divulge it here. Instead, I will mention how shameful this movie is. It’s full of talented people: Keegan-Michael Key, Judy Greer, John Leguizamo…all have good comedy chops but are either totally misused or given unbearably awful lines. It really hurt me to see such funny people flounder about trying to wring a laugh out of completely vapid material that’s going to be forgotten by pop culture as soon as it leaves theatres. At least they all got a paycheck out of this. 


Don’t Be Like Me. Don’t Waste Your Life With This.

I will be fair. I laughed genuinely a few times, usually due to the antics of  Keegan-Michael Key or John Leguizamo but that was a truly rare occurrence. Also, I made jokes at Cena’s expense but he isn’t that bad, he’s just burdened by a dumb character and terrible lines. There’s a lot of plot holes, things that could have been done to make Playing With Fire smarter or more emotionally meaningful but I’m not going to waste my time or yours by writing them down. This is destined to be a weird bargain bin DVD find in a few years and then everyone will forget about it. Especially John Cena.

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