Back in Action: Cameron Diaz’s comeback vehicle has some highlights and many lowlights

You don’t have to be a pun aficionado to get the double meaning in the title of Back in Action.

It’s not just about two retired spies who have to flex their muscles again, it’s Cameron Diaz’s return to acting after a decade-long break. Get it? Get it?

That’s the level of subtlety in Back in Action, a comedic caper also starring Jamie Foxx, Glenn Close, Kyle Chandler, Andrew Scott and Jamie Demetriou.

It’s over-the-top, earnest, goofy and generally inoffensive. Back in Action is both better and worse than you’d expect.

Better because Diaz and Foxx genuinely have some enjoyable chemistry, and none of the promos suggested this movie was going to be anything other than a middling actioner.

Worse because the stunt sequences are completely devoid of logic and gravity. There is no peril or stakes, and, therefore, no reason to give a crap.

Emily (Diaz) and Matt (Foxx) work for the CIA. Two things converge: Emily discovers she is pregnant with Matt’s baby, and their mission retrieving a digital “key” goes haywire when their private jet is hijacked by mercenaries.

They decide to walk away from the spy business, change their identities and retreat to suburbia where, 15 years later, they have two kids, annoying teenager Alice (McKenna Roberts) and precocious son Leo (Rylan Jackson).

When Emily and Matt go viral in a video where they’re shown kicking some thug arse, their covers are exposed and then have to go on the run. Their only leverage is to retrieve the “key” from Emily’s estranged mother Ginny’s (Close) English manner and use it to get themselves off the hook for faking their deaths.

Goons are on the chase, as is MI6 agent Baron (Scott), who may or may not be a bad guy. Meanwhile, their kids demand to know what their parents have hidden from them and why their passports have fake names.

Back in Action follows a predictable art where the beats swing between family squabbles and entirely unbelievable (in a bad way) action sequences culminating in an elaborate set-up at the Tate Modern and on London’s Thames River. Yes, another American spy thriller set in London where the production tax breaks must be very generous.

The stunts are rote and uninspiring, and serve little more than time you could spend making yourself a tea, and then taking a toilet break from that tea — which you can do because Back in Action is only available on streaming.

Not that every movie should be Mission Impossible nor Fast & Furious, but there should be some fidelity to cause and effect.

But Diaz’s return makes for an engaging element. She and Foxx bounce off each other and their surroundings with their characters’ parent jokes. Their wounded objection that they’re Gen X-ers and not Boomers is good for a chuckle when delivered by two charismatic movie stars.

Parents of teenagers will also relate to the frustration and hurt that you try to do everything for your kids and they’ll still resent you.

The most effective encapsulation of this emotion comes from not Diaz but actually Close, who, if nothing else, looks like she’s having an absolute ball, even if you’re not quite prepared to see her and Demetriou stick their tongues down each other’s throats.

Back in Action is not going to blow your mind and will be quickly forgotten as anything other than “that movie that was Cameron Diaz’s return from retirement”. It has no edges and has obviously aimed for family friendly but there is no way anyone under the age of 18 will find this anything other than lame.

If the writing was sharper and the action significantly better, this could’ve been more than just not overly objectionable.

Rating: 2.5/5

Back in Action is on Netflix