Can tough guy Vin Diesel be huggable? He tries to be in the new Disney family film The Pacifier.
As a Navy Seal, Shane Wolfe (Diesel) is trained to tackle some of the most difficult assignments in the world, but when he is assigned to guard a government scientist’s family, he has to do something he has never been trained for, babysitting.
If you don’t feel like reading any further, I will tell you right now this film is awful, and not worth seeing.
The Pacifier tries to capitalize on a classic comedic formula, placing a familiar character in an unfamiliar scenario, i.e. tough guy Navy Seal has to play Mr. Mom.
You can almost imagine the Disney boardroom where this film was green-lit.
One tired Disney executive says, “What would be the craziest scenario we could put tough guy Vin Diesel in, hmm… what if he had to be a babysitter of four cute kids? I hear Columbia is doing something like that with Ice Cube and it worked for Arnie in Kindergarten Cop.”
“That’s gold baby,” says another brown nosed Disney executive, “Let’s get lunch”.
The problem is, for this formula to work you need to have a funny, charismatic, likeable lead actor.
Unfortunately, Vin Diesel is not up to this challenge. Instead, he has a hard time convincing you he is a Navy Seal, much less a caring babysitter that falls for a family of bratty kids.
Is it too early to claim this as the worst film of 2005? Probably so, but it is definitely firmly at the top of my list.
