Critic Reviews

Anchored by Diaz and Foxx's combined star power and a general sense of pleasantness that never fades, it's a solid little action-comedy with a bit of family fun at its core. The bad news, if you want to look at it that way, is that there's not much else there, leaving the film a hollow, though pleasant, experience.

Back in Action is no comedy classic, but it’s a better than average excuse for getting back on the Cameron Diaz train.

The movie won’t carve a spot in the classic action-comedy canon, but it’s easily digested fun, which is no bad thing.

Director Seth Gordon (“Four Christmases,” “Horrible Bosses”) knows how to film fast-moving comedies with star appeal, and Diaz (who hasn’t lost an ounce of onscreen charisma) and Foxx are terrific together, but wouldn’t it have been lovely if they had tackled more creative and challenging material?

It is vivaciously, even triumphantly, OK. If there was an Oscar for Most Adequate Picture, we’d be gearing up for a sweep.

A solid action-comedy that proves just how much we’ve missed Cameron Diaz in the last ten years. Next time don’t leave it so long, eh?

The action comes fast and furious, and the banter is pleasant enough. Diaz, especially, makes the proceedings decently enjoyable and some of the sillier lines believable.

Back in Action functions modestly well as a welcome back to the screen for Cameron Diaz, who is still capable of being as charming today as she ever may have been. It even functions decently well as an action movie for the specific, too-narrow frames of time where Diaz and Foxx are thrashing wave after wave of nameless mooks–whoever the choreographer and stunt coordinators are here, they’ve done the heaviest lifting of anyone on the project. But the film feels absolutely threadbare in all other dimensions.

Despite reuniting them, Back In Action has nothing new to give its movie stars. It’s not enough that they’re “back” in more of the same material seen in Charlie’s Angels, Knight And Day, or White House Down. They deserve material that considers all that has come before and builds upon it.

Diaz and her co-star Jamie Foxx are genuinely charismatic, often delivering lines with a winking sarcasm and likeability. But Back in Action muddles its tone too much to be actually funny, a detriment to the cast’s best efforts.