Film Preview: Spies in Disguise (2019)

Page Revisions:

(November 4, 2018) Original
(July 7, 2019) New Trailer (#2) / New Poster (#2)
(October 6, 2019) New Trailer (#3) / New Poster (#3) / New Release Date (changed from 9/13/19)
(December 22, 2019) New Posters (#4-#13)

Release Date:

December 25, 2019

Synopsis:

From IMDb: “Lance and Walter. One is a super cool and charming spy, and the other invents the super cool gadgets Lance uses. When an event happens, they must learn to rely on each other like never before in order to save the world.”

Poster Rating: C+ / C / C+ / C (9) / B

SEE ALL POSTERS BELOW
Review: (#1) The James Bond theme is obvious, the shadow of a pigeon is also modestly obvious.

(#2) The pigeon shadow is an eye-rolling effect that doesn’t boost the design’s creativity. Then again, nothing about this poster and its limited color palette is that creative.

(#3) The slick design feels too sanitized. The colors are smooth with very little variance making a design that looks more like the cover of a cheap direct-to-video animated film than a major motion picture release.

(#4-#12) These character posters use the same background theme of prior design and lack variance, which makes them visually dull. (#13) The pastiche works surprisingly well even if it doesn’t quite fit the concept of the film.

Trailer Rating: C / B- / C+

SEE ALL TRAILERS BELOW
Review: (#1) The “twist” in this trailer is fairly obvious if you see the poster first, but that doesn’t mute the impact of the trailer, which is pretty much already weak. It isn’t terribly funny and the animation is often quite ugly.

(#2) Now that we have a better idea of the film’s premise and the interaction between Will Smith and Tom Holland, we have a better idea of the kind of animated film this will be. That it’s overly fueled by Smith’s ego is not a point in its favor.

(#3) Clever comedy is required for animated features and this trailer does a poor job conveying any such conceits in the film. What here is either childish or unfunny, which makes the entire trailer a tough sell to young audiences.

Oscar Prospects:

There aren’t many animated films in contention each year and this will likely be one of the few, but Blue Sky is not a studio that tends to gain traction with Oscar voters.