The Family Plan Parent Guide

Dan Morgan (Mark Wahlberg) is content with his sleepy suburban life, selling used cars and taking his kids to school with his wife, Jessica (Michell Monaghan). Unfortunately for Dan, he hasn’t always been a used car salesman, and that past is running to catch up with him.

Before he met Jessica and settled down in Buffalo, Dan was a highly skilled international assassin, and that’s not the kind of job that readily accepts a two-week notice. After a brawl with a hitman in his local supermarket, Dan realizes that his cover is blown and he needs a safe hiding place for his family. He can get new IDs from a former contact in Vegas, but first he’ll have to get everyone there in one piece. And there’s a hitch: Dan’s wife and kids don’t know about his past.

I’ve spent too much time thinking about this movie already. Just watching it should exempt me from any further contemplation. To be honest, watching this movie is almost impossible: I had it on for the entire runtime but I kept catching myself staring blankly into space and daydreaming about getting sucked into a black hole. I suspect that is because this flick is intensely boring. It overwhelms viewers with inertia, dragging out the runtime and killing any interest you might have had in seeing how this shakes out – as if you didn’t already know. You’ve seen this movie (or it’s rough equivalent) at least half a dozen times in as many years.

The Family Plan is a hard sell at PG-13, mostly because of the violence. It’s not particularly gory, but there is a lot of violence going on, and the charming “family comedy” veneer doesn’t quite cover it when some guy has a knife sticking out of his eye. There’s a bit of swearing, and an old PG-13 classic – a scene of a couple making out and undressing fades to black and they’re suddenly in bed, talking about something else. Compared to other assassin films, this isn’t a lot of negative content, but since the rest of the show is a complete void, the violence and profanity tend to stand out more.

Overlong, unpleasant, and frequently soporific, The Family Plan would be best left off your family’s cinematic schedules. There are no incredible performances, no validating messages, no interesting or compelling themes, and not a laugh in sight. All you get here is a congealing mass of stale tropes, kindly regurgitated for your general disgust. Enjoy!