Playing with Fire

The comedy is broad and slapstick, but ultimately the film is heartwarming and lovely. You’ll find yourself laughing in spite of your initial reaction to the goofiness of the premise. It’s also a fun way to spend an afternoon with the kids.

The whole thing is shot and lit in that dull flat way that is mandatory for Hollywood family comedies, and the script is mainly dull, though I concede Key has some nice lines as he gets cross with Brynn’s sarcastic attitude.

It’s an unchallenging movie, but as far as unchallenging kids movies go, the actors ensure this one doesn’t fall into soullessness.

Playing with Fire . . . is a barely glorified sitcom made in the overlit and benignly smart-mouth Nickelodeon house style.

Director Andy Fickman (“Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2”) favors poop jokes and the cringe-humor of watching little kids court danger with a nail gun, kerosene, an ax and sometimes literally fire.

The film is bland and predictable, underestimates kids’ abilities to understand story and humor, and relies way too much on sight gags that are clichéd and overdone.

This mirthless comedy about a manly crew of smokejumpers helplessly babysitting a trio of rescued brats has more dead air in it than a radio broadcast hosted by a narcoleptic disc jockey.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

Funny that in some other movie critic sites this has better scores than here. Anyway, obvious rating from critics, but I have to say - this is really a movie meant for kids. Sometimes there are movies which are meant for both adults and kids, but this was basically mostly for kids (which I am not) and the story was so much repeating old tropes - the ending was super predictable and most stuff throughout also. Would've preferred more thought out story with more plot points, plus less dumb jokes which werent funny. This felt more like some episode of tv series not a movie

Playing with Fire is an amazingly awful movie, and weirdly enough, i wasn't even that frustrated while watching it, i think i caught it in the right mood, when i just wanted something easy and not serious at all, the bad acting definitely doesn't help, but there are a few moments that genuinely made me chuckle and smile. Still, the film is terribly written and poorly acted, with some really weak filmmaking overall, the adult actors aren't all that terrible, they still bad at times, though, i have to give credit to John Cena for doing his best, i'm a big wrestling fan and a fan of his in general, so i naturally find some charm in his presence, Keegan-Michael Key is easily the funniest person in the film and pretty much the only reason a few jokes land at all. The kids, though, are rough, like, genuinely painful to watch at times, some of the worst child acting i've ever seen, the youngest one especially delivers a performance so over-the-top and unnatural that it pulls you right out of the movie, it has its boring moments too, and it really feels like one of those films that's almost impossible to defend as good or even decently entertaining, it's that bad. Is this one of those "so bad it's good" movies? Maybe, but barely, the charm is extremely limited, and mostly depends on how much patience you have, or how much you like John Cena like i did, if Cena were replaced by someone else, i'd probably just be annoyed the whole time, in the end, Playing with Fire is just simply awful, it has a few accidental charms, but they're nowhere near enough to save it.

It was a cute movie for families with kids. Artistically, it was crap. The acting was bad, the characters were absurd, the story was ridiculous and totally predictable. But it still had a certain charm. If I were married with younger kids, I would consider it a perfectly respectable weekend rental.