Avis Metacritic

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?

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 Foxx still got it, the film constantly screams. The evidence on display, however, suggests otherwise.

It’s the kind of film that even the most devoted cinema purist should be comfortable referring to as “content.” But watching Foxx and Diaz crackle with the age-appropriate chemistry of a couple that still finds each other attractive after 15 years is a reminder that star power is still as important as ever.

Most people are likely clicking on this film for Foxx and Diaz, and they, too, do their best with what they’re given, but the dull, exposition-heavy script never gives them the chance to flex any of their dramatic muscles, and they rarely get to be truly funny either.

Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx do their jobs in Back in Action, assuring that it remains mostly watchable. But it’s ultimately a bummer to watch two well-established stars and versatile actors returning to big-budget filmmaking just to make another spies-versus-real-life action-comedy.

As it stands, the mostly rather rote Back in Action is best seen as just an excuse to watch Diaz act again, and she’s as charming as she always has been, especially alongside Foxx, with whom she shares a comfortable chemistry.

Seth Gordon’s film is largely, and awkwardly, beholden to the most banal of spy tropes.