Shawn Van Horn is a Senior Author for Collider. He’s watched way too many slasher movies over the decades, which makes him an aficionado on all things Halloween and Friday the 13th. Don’t ask him to choose between Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees because he can’t do it. He grew up in the 90s, when Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, and TGIF were his life, and still watches them religiously to this day. Larry David is his spirit animal. His love for entertainment spreads to the written word as well. He has written two novels and is neck deep in the querying trenches. He is also a short story maker upper and poet with a dozen publishing credits to his name. He lives in small town Ohio, where he likes to watch professional wrestling and movies.
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These days, there are film adaptations of everything you can think of —not just books and video games, but even toys, including the recent Barbie and Masters of the Universe. Now, Apple TV’s Matchbox: The Movie has adapted those tiny toy cars you played with as a child into their own feature film. But *Matchbox: The Movie *isn’t about the toys themselves, which unfortunately probably would have been a more interesting idea than the actual film we got.
Starring John Cena and Jessica Biel, Matchbox: The Movie is nothing more than a dull Fast and the Furious knockoff with lots of action yet little reason to exist. It’s fine for what it is, but you won’t remember it decades later, the way you do those toy cars that inspired your childhood imagination.
Matchbox: The Movie begins in the late ’90s, following a group of five teenagers in Ohio who call themselves the Matchbox gang. With nowhere else to go, they hang out in the garage run by Aimee’s (Reagan Marum) mechanic uncle (Bill Camp), and play with his toy car collection (as teens certainly love to do). Among them is Sean Walker (Graham Harvey), who’s madly in love with Aimee. After telling him she’ll forever love anyone who gives her a vintage 1969 Chevy Camaro, Sean gets her a Matchbox version of the car, only to chicken out when the moment to give it to her and profess his love arrives.
Coming home ends up being a bad idea for Sean. Not only must he face Aimee, who he still secretly loves, but soon enough, Sean and his old friends are taken hostage, with the whole group blamed for the warhead theft. Through a mix of action and fish-out-of-water comedy, they must clear their names and save each other’s lives.
The first several minutes of Matchbox: The Movie are rough. The child actors’ lines are too cute to be realistic, and the music swells like we’re in a Hallmark movie. Once the storyline switches over to the present, the film finds a bit more footing with a stellar cast who are capable of making anything believable. The only issue is that the script they’re given, written by David Coggenshall, is beyond generic. We spent so little time with these characters in the past that there is no reason to care about them now, other than we know that we’re supposed to. Sean is the typical badass good guy, a serious man who can easily take out any no-face bad guy who gets in his way with his fists or a gun. Aimee is the sad divorcee who is there to look longingly at Sean and help him save the day when the time comes, and little more. Everyone is a type, but no one is an actual person.
Matchbox: The Movie is adequately directed by Sam Hargrave (Extraction). The action scenes are well shot and flow smoothly, and while most of them are generic and paint-by-numbers, there are some rather intense moments. However, when every other scene is either a gun fight, brawl, or car chase, all easily won by a group of heroes who can dodge hundreds of bullets aimed their way, nothing matters. One scene even goes so far as to have a protagonist’s leg set on fire for a good thirty seconds, only for them to then be fine, as if nothing happened, for the rest of the movie.
Implausibility is an issue for many action flicks, as it’s a genre where belief must inherently be suspended. That lack of believability can be okay for an audience who desires only high-octane thrills. However, when the action is completely empty, what should be exciting is just mind-numbing. What at least keeps Matchbox: The Movie watchable is the comedy. Sean Walker’s friends are in over their heads, and they’re completely baffled by their predicament. Sam Richardson, in particular, carries the weight of comic relief with ease as he’s done so many times before. But these actors, as great as they are, are the supporting cast. Matchbox: The Movie is a John Cena vehicle, and it only succeeds if he’s allowed to drive. This, sadly, is where the film truly fails itself.
John Cena oozes charisma as massive as his muscles, which the former WWE star showed for decades in the wrestling ring. But when he first began acting in generic action films like The Marine, it looked like his Hollywood career was dead on arrival. It took Trainwreck to show that Cena was capable of being so much more than the stoic good guy in bland action fare. He has continued to impress in the years since, most recently as the villain in this year’s Coyote vs. Acme.
That’s what makes Matchbox: The Movie so disappointing: It does so little with its huge star. Rather than showing any personality, Cena is running in place like it’s 2006 all over again. Watching him act so effortlessly cool is a devolution of his acting abilities. Sean Walker’s flat facial expressions and voice rarely change outside of a small smile and quick joke here and there; he’s a sad guy here to kick butt, like so many other action icons have done before. Restraining his talent and refusing to let him break free is shocking. He’s also done no favors by being given a poorly-written main villain who is so easy to defeat.
Matchbox: The Movie isn’t a disaster. It’s watchable if you’ve got two hours to kill on some mindless action schlock. That’s not good enough, though, for a film that feels more like propaganda for a toy, where the script is given little importance. More than once, characters tell us that a Matchbox toy is more than just a car. But the film struggles to show us that it’s about something. It wants us to believe that it’s about love without putting any love into the final product. The stellar cast deserves so much better than this. You do, too. Perhaps the announced Hot Wheels movie will get it right.
Matchbox the Movie
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John Cena can’t drive through this messy script.
