Dan Silvestri:
Hi, this is Dan Silvestri and Tom Pizzato, join us as we’re Cracking The Code Of Spy Movies. Check us out on our website https://spymovienavigator.com and please subscribe to our show through your favorite podcast app. Happy holidays to all our listeners all around the world. We appreciate you listening and happy new year. Today we’re going to take a quick-fire look at the movie Spies in Disguise, which was released in the US on Christmas Day 2019.

Tom Pizzato:
This one’s a bit different than our normal movie discussion is. Spies in Disguise, it’s an animated movie really geared for kids. And Dan, as you know, we normally have been talking about non-kid based movies. Now this movie was actually based on this short animation film called Pigeon: Impossible which should kind of give you a hint as to what they were thinking. And that’s only a six-minute video. You can find it on YouTube.

Dan Silvestri:
All right: Now we’re not going to do one of our in-depth shows on this movie, but this movie is a great intro to spy movies for kids and adults have something to see here as well. Right, Tom?

Tom Pizzato:
Yeah, absolutely. This is definitely a movie that there’s stuff in there for the adults as well as the kids.

Dan Silvestri:
Now, Tom saw the movie, I’ve watched all the trailers and read some articles on the movie but Tom actually saw the movie. So he’s going to go through most of this stuff here. And I just want to say during the holiday season here, I’m just finishing off a pack of red velvet pizzelle Italian cookies, Tom, and yeah, you want one here? I’ve got the package here. Have some.

TOM: Yeah. I’m ok.

DAN: They’re delicious. They’re Italian waffle cookies by the way. And a cup of coffee. It’s like, Oh, that’s great. But I digress just a bit.

TOM: That’s a good way to go ahead and record a podcast, Dan, eat something.

DAN: So Tom’s going to tell you about the movie.

Tom Pizzato:
I’m going to actually start off by saying I saw the 2D version of this movie. There is a 3D version of this and from what I’ve heard online, you know, looking at reviews and listening to podcasts on it, the 3D is actually really good. Unfortunately, the timing we had on Christmas day, which is when I went the only one available at the time, we could go was the 2D showing. So you know, I can’t, I can’t really comment on the 3D but I have read good things about how they did that.

Dan Silvestri:
Yeah, now Tom, you went with a family member to see Spies in Disguise. We talked about it a little bit before, but why did you go see it? And it really is a kid’s movie, right?

Tom Pizzato:
Yeah. It’s a cartoon. But why did I go to it? I believe our website is called SpyMovieNavigator.com. And this is a spy movie. And I think we shouldn’t really distinguish between whether it’s an adult movie or a kid movie. And so I wanted to see what it was and quite honestly, I was pretty curious after looking at the trailers how this thing was going to work out.

Dan Silvestri:
Yeah. Yeah. And you, like I said, there’s, there’s stuff in here for adults too, right?

Tom Pizzato:
Oh yeah, there’s, there’s definitely stuff that’ll keep the adults happy that they went, okay. So yeah, if you look at what we do on our podcast, we’re looking at how spy movies have influenced other spy movies or how real-world events have influenced spy movies. And there’s definitely some homage paid in this movie to other spy movies and the whole genre in general. So it’s actually kind of interesting to see, okay. Even though this is a cartoon based for kids, how they bring some of that stuff together. So we decided that a quick-fire sounded like a good idea to do for this one. Although this is geared at kids, this is an animation movie and Dan as, you know, I’m a big fan of animated movies. Again, adults do have something to see here. And we went on Christmas Day and I don’t know if in other countries if the movie theaters are even open there, but in the US actually, Christmas is a fairly big day for the movie theaters.

Tom Pizzato:
It was fairly full for the showing we went at three o’clock in the afternoon showing. And it was interesting to me because at one moment I thought there was a kid’s laugh track because the laughter was so loud and I’m looking around and the kids just love this thing. And actually, after the movie was over I went up to the bunch of parents because you don’t want to approach the kids and ask them, you know, what’d you guys, what’d your kids think of the movie? And with one exception they were all like, Oh I love it. I love it, I love it. The one small exception was there was a really small child there who told me that it was bad “because there was a bad guy in it, but that it got better when they caught the bad guy.” That’s cute.

Tom Pizzato:
But also, if you’re a parent trying to figure out if you’re going to take your kid to this in the US this is rated parental guidance or PG, there’s a bad guy. There’s some a few explosions in it. So you know as you’re trying to figure out whether you bring your kid or not. Just realize that this isn’t a G-rated movie, it’s a PG-rated movie because there is some of this, some of this stuff in there. Not a lot, but again, this one little kid was a little taken back by it.

DAN: Yeah. So, there are references though. Like you, I think you’re hinting that there’s references to other spy movies in this movie.

TOM: Yeah. And I was totally looking forward to how they were going to do that. How are they going to tie that stuff in?

Tom Pizzato:
There is a pre-title sequence that just like a lot of other spy movies do, this thing really feels like a BOND set up in terms of the way the pre-titles work. It does have a, it looks like it’s opening with like this fuse kind of a thing, and then they pull back and it’s a laser.

DAN: kind of like a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE thing.

TOM: Yeah. So it felt kind of like, Oh, they’re starting like with this MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE thing. They pull back and it’s a laser. Now we do actually have, if you go out to our YouTube channel, we do have a video, “The Top 12 Uses of Lasers in Spy Movies”. It’s fun. It’s a fun video. Shows you other, other places that lasers were used in spy movies. Now there’s also a knock off of the: “Bond, James Bond” line from the BOND series. And that got a bigger response from the parents as most of the kids wouldn’t know “Bond, James Bond”.

DAN: Okay, so the adults in the audience, are going okay I know that. So what is the line? Can you say what the line is?

TOM: I’m not going to give it away.

DAN: Oh, come on.

TOM: No. Walter says it in the movie and Walter is, and I’ll explain who the characters are, but he’s this nerd, younger person who is the gadget geek guy.

DAN: So he’s kind of the Q guy.

TOM: Yeah. He’s kind of like the Q guy and he’s the, he’s the nerd science guy. I don’t want to give away the line because if you, when you’d go to it, if you understand science, you’ll catch it. If you don’t, you might want to look it up.

DAN: That’s all you’re going to say. All right.

TOM: That’s all. That’s all I’m going to say. Cause it was actually, I thought it was fairly clever the way they did it for the Walter character.

DAN: Okay. Alright.

TOM: As I mentioned before, there are some explosions. Nothing major, but there are some in there, there are underwater sequences that kind of, you know, we’ve seen in different spy movies,

DAN: Thunderball.

TOM: yeah, in Thunderball and others. However, we had just done a quick-fire last month on Charlie’s Angels where the whole movie seemed to be a regurgitation of other spy movies. This one wasn’t like that. There was definite homage paid to BOND, HUNT, and BOURNE, but a lot of this movie really felt fresh.

DAN: All right, Tom. I know the directors of this film watched all of the BOND films, all the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and all the BOURNE movies to prep themselves for this film. So I read that in an article on syfy.com and it was a great little article by the way. Go read that if you like to go find it. Can you give us like an example of what some of the homages paid were here or what’s,

TOM: Yeah, we’ll go through a bunch of those as we go through this podcast and I’ll say in that article they actually expressly mentioned the pre-title sequence and how they designed that to really have a Bondian feel. It really does in the way they set it up and go right into the titles and the music and they really nail that pretty well in my opinion.

Tom Pizzato: Now, the basic premise of this movie, again, it’s a kid’s movie, is that the super spy drinks a potion and turns into a pigeon,

DAN: turns into a pigeon, right? Yeah. Yes. I’ve seen that in the trailers.

TOM: one of those darned birds.

DAN: Right. And the trailers are, we have a trailer actually on our homepage, on our website. If you want to take a look at it now. Wow. So he turns into a pigeon.

TOM: He turns into a pigeon.

DAN: Now, is that the disguise?

TOM: It’s not really a disguise. But, from a disguise perspective. What a beautiful way for a spy to go anywhere he or she wants to go. You become a pigeon. You’re not going to be known, I mean, there’s a scene in the Piazza San Marco in Venice where there’s just a ton of pigeons. You want to be unobserved.

Tom Pizzato:It’s a great way to do it. And actually, the Walter character says “pigeons are everywhere and nobody notices them. They’re the most perfect form a spy can take”. At least it beast swimming with a bird with a scuba mask on.

DAN: Oh, you mean the like the one BOND where it’s coming out of the water in the beginning of Goldfinger. That’s what you’re talking about?

TOM: Yeah, exactly.

DAN: I was a little confused there. I was like, what? I got it. All right.

TOM: Now, the basic premise of this movie is there’s the superstar spy named Lance, and he’s voiced by Will Smith. And it’s interesting when they drew him, they wanted to draw him kind of like martini glass shaped. So he’s got very big shoulders, very, very narrow. As he comes down.

Tom Pizzato:
Now he meets this young gadget guy named Walter. Now let’s think about this. We have Lance and we have Walter kind of sounds to me like Walter Lanz. So I think this was a shout out to the great cartoonist, Walter Lanz who directed the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series and gave us Woody Woodpecker. So I think that was one of those little when I saw or heard these names, I’m like, that’s Walter Lanz.

DAN: These guys are clever with stuff like that. So that’s good that.

TOM: They absolutely are. Now Lance, the superspy, accidentally drinks a potion that Walter was working on and it turns Lance into a pigeon. But Walter doesn’t have the antidote for this. So, he’s a pigeon for a lot of the movie and he’s on the trail of a bad guy named Killian and Lance is used to doing everything on his own.

Tom Pizzato:
He’s a super spy. If you think about Bond. Bond doesn’t really use a lot of support from a lot of people. There’s a little bit there, but not a ton. If you think about Bourne, it’s the same type of thing. And Ethan Hunt has the team, so he’s not quite as out on his own. But again, remember Lance turns into a pigeon and at one point he says, “I fly solo”.

DAN: All right, that’s a good line.

TOM: So it’s, it’s pretty good, but he eventually has to get realizes since he’s now in a pigeon form, he needs some help. And Walter’s the guy who’s going to do this. Nice. Now, one of the things, where they took an idea that was used in other spy movies that they bring forward in here, is the concept of the double pursuit. And we’ve talked about this in the past in our 39 Steps, The 39 Steps podcast.

DAN: Yeah, Check out our podcast on The 39 Steps (Link). We talk a lot about the double pursuit idea here. And it’s really is a cool idea and a lot of spy movies do use this concept.

TOM: So this movie, the super spy, Lance, his agency thinks he’s gone bad because they can’t find him cause he’s a pigeon.

DAN: Oh, an agent gone rogue.

TOM: Yeah, they think he’s an agent gone rogue. So they’re trying to catch him and then you still, and you have the pursuit with the, with Killian the bad guy, right? So you’ve got the double pursuit where the bad guy wants him and the, and the agency wants Lance as well. So it’s kind of interesting from that perspective. There are also high-end car chases, submarines, some muted explosions and a lot of the fun stuff we’re used to seeing in spy movies. Toward the end, Walter figures out the antidote and Lance is brought back to his human form.

Tom Pizzato: However, Lance needs to go back to the pigeon form to save Walter who had been grabbed by Killian. So we actually see Lance’s conflict of should I use this potion again or not to go on should I become a pigeon again or not.

DAN: That’s a nice little built-in conflict there. That’s kind of cool. Yeah, I like that.

TOM: Now, especially for the kids. Walter’s character is really good. He’s this gadget guy and I really imagine him as a young version of Ben Whishaw, his version of Q in JAMES BOND. Not really a Desmond version, but if you take, if you take Ben’s version of him,

DAN: Yeah, I can see that in the trailers and I was actually thinking that in the trailers. I said this is kinda like the new Q, Ben Whishaw’s Q. Yeah. That’s good.

Tom Pizzato:
Yeah. So, and now there is a gadget lab in the movie, which I love. So they’re walking through there. It’s very close in concept to the old Q labs in the pre-Daniel Craig BOND movies where they walk through and there’s all this stuff happening in the background. And so Lance walks through it, we get to see all of that stuff as well. So it’s kinda, it’s kinda cool to see that brought forward.

Dan Silvestri:
Yeah, I read this other article, and I, and I think maybe from these articles, at least it’s, there’s, there’s always a hidden message in this movie of promoting the kids and making them do good things and whatever else. And so in this one article, I just read about this said the gadgets were actually rooted in, in science, so, and they’re again trying to show or encourage kids that they can go pursue a science career and so on. So you think in the whole movie, Tom, that there are these messages that are going through this that are these positive messages for kids?

Tom Pizzato:
Oh, absolutely. There’s a lot, there’s a lot of it. It’s great. It’s great to be weird. Is one of the things they talk about because Walter’s this geeky science guy, right? And so there’s parts of that that are, are put through here. Even if you take the take-off, they take on “Bond, James Bond”, there’s a science bent to that. So this is Walter’s a science guy who wants to take and create these gadgets to help the world. But unlike in the adult-oriented spy movies, the gadgets are much cuter and in fact, none of them can hurt people. So they’re their gadgets designed to incapacitate or freeze or deflate a human body.

DAN: That sounds bad.

TOM: force someone to tell the truth or stun them. I mean, there’s this one device called Kitty Glitter and they use it in the movie a lot and it’s used to distract people from whatever they were doing and pretty much stops them in their tracks and they get a smile on their face. You can think of glitter in the air with cat images. All right. I mean, it sounds odd, but this is an animated movie for kids and it actually works in this movie. There’s even a trick pen type of a gadget that’s used to do some of this stuff as well. But again, it’s all harmless stuff showing how we can use science to do good and use it also to help fight crime.

Dan Silvestri: All right, There was another article I read in the LA Times that said, one of the things that directors wanted to highlight is that violence is not the answer. It’s the kind of fighting, the idea of fighting another kind of fighting the idea that maybe Lance had to fight fire with fire kind of thing. You know, that they were saying that violence doesn’t always make sense. And so this obviously makes perfect sense with Walter ‘s gadgets not hurting anyone.

TOM: Well, yeah, and that’s Walter’s gadgets, right? So Killian has some stuff that does blow things up. Ah, okay. All right. So there’s even a gadget that just really cracked me up. It’s, it’s called the Inflatable Hug and this thing, when I saw that they get instantly,

DAN: That’s a great name again, I’ve got to give credit to whoever came up with that.

TOM: So yeah, it’s cute. It doesn’t hurt you. It’s very similar to a gadget that was used in the James Bond movie. The World is Not Enough, and I don’t remember what they called it in that movie if they even gave it a name, but it was the inflatable jacket thing. That saves Bond and Elektra when they’re in that avalanche, like puts that bubble around them. Oh yeah. So, it’s used differently in this movie, but it looks similar and its goal is to protect whatever’s in it, just like in The World is Not Enough. And now when I saw that I was just like wow. Instantly it took me back to that film. So it was really cool to see that.

Dan Silvestri:
So there, they’re probably obviously conscious of that whole scene in The World Is Not Enough. And they’re kind of rolling it in. {pun intended}

Tom Pizzato:
yeah, they’re exactly rolling it in and they roll it in a couple of times without overdoing it. But it’s actually, I actually thought it was really cool. There’s also the line, “I need a code name” and that plays directly into the code name theories with JAMES BOND and more directly into the BOURNE movies. With Jason Bourne being the code name for David Webb.

Dan Silvestri:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Again, I read another article at headtopics.com and it said the directors, was it Quane and Bruno, right, Quane and Bruno. They wanted to dig a little bit into the idea that sometimes the only thing separating heroes and villains is perspective and so this whole good versus evil kind of good and bad stuff. They wanted to kind of dig into a little bit in this movie and when I read that I thought, well that’s again, you look at Quantum of Solace with Bond when Mathis and bond get together in, in the, in his home, in Italy on, he’s trying to get Mathis to help them and Mathis tells Bond. He says, when one’s young, it seems very easy to distinguish between right and wrong, but as one gets older it all becomes more difficult to villains and heroes get all mixed up. So it’s the same kind of look. It sounded like they were doing again, certainly know about Quantum of Solace and wanted to kind of touch on that in this movie about this good versus bad kind of thing and dig into that a little bit. So you see that kind of thread going through there too, Tom?

Tom Pizzato:
Oh, absolutely. Especially with the double pursuit. Yeah, because to the agency Lance’s a bad guy. Yeah. Right. They’ve got to capture him even though he’s out trying to be the good guy so that it does get, you know, what is your perspective, which way you see this? One of the things we see in this movie that we see fairly often in other spy movies is the spy seeing the bad guy coming at him through a reflection. Somebody is coming at the spy from behind and the good spy sees the bad person coming in the reflection of something. So if you think back to the pre-title sequence of Goldfinger and Bond is looking into, in the pre-title, he’s looking into her eyes and he sees the guy getting ready to hit him from behind. Yeah. This technique’s used a few times in Spies in Disguise as well. Like some other spy movies. There are quite a few quips in this thing. And we also hear the line, “I’m taking everything from you”: which is similar to things we’ve heard in some spy movies like in Mission: Impossible III, Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s character uses a similar line like that. Spectre or even in the trailer to No Time to Die. You get that theme come through. And that comes in this movie as well.

Dan Silvestri:
So, Tom, I’ve watched all the trailers and I wanted to ask you about the music because, in the trailers it sounded, it sounded pretty cool.

Tom Pizzato: Yeah, I think they did a really good job with the music in this. It sets the mood of the scenes very well. It’s generally uplifting. Most of it’s unique but very modern. But I did feel a hint of Lalo Schifrin’s “Theme from Mission: Impossible” a couple of times. Which was, which was kind of fun. It wasn’t quite it, but it was kind of, it kind of had that feel to it, which I really enjoyed.

Now I mentioned that there’s a villain in this and this guy’s a medicine guy. He’s got a robotic hand. Think Dr. No, but much more functional. He has an eye that glows red and is just pretty nasty. Plus just like in a lot of spy movies, the villain doesn’t do the dirty work.

DAN: You mean the big villain.

TOM: Yeah, the big villain. He or she has people do the dirty work for him or her and in this case, Killian has an army of drones which blow things up. They attack people and do other things like that and to me, it’s a really good thing if we look at how real-world impacts and how other movies impact these spy movies, there’s a proliferation of drones that’s happening right now in the world. Sure. Kids have seen that. A lot of kids have probably played with drones. So bringing this into the movie brings a real-world aspect.

Dan Silvestri:Yeah. And we had, the military has drones that actually do go blow things up. So

Tom Pizzato:
absolutely. It’s not just pizza delivery.

Dan Silvestri:
Yeah. Yeah. Tom, Spiderman, I think earlier in this year, earlier in 2019 we had the movie a Spider-man: Far From Home. And in that movie, Spiderman has to fight off an army of drones. So kinda, it’s kind of a touch of irony, the actor here, isn’t it? The guy Tom Holland was the Spiderman guy, right?

Tom Pizzato: Yeah. So Tom Holland played Peter Parker in Spider-man: Far From Home. He’s also the voice of Walter in Spies in Disguise.

DAN: That’s a cool connection there.

TOM: And he had to fight an army of drones in both movies. So kind of a nice little, nice little tie in here.

Now, one opportunity I totally think they missed here. And again, it’s, I’m a, I’m an animation film fan. So to me, it’s like, I look for things like this, but they didn’t have a song in here. And we talked about the music a second ago. They didn’t have a song in here, like the “Friend Like Me” song in Aladdin.

DAN: Oh, I love that song.

TOM: And to me like that movie or “Under The Sea” in The Little Mermaid. If they had a song, something like that, they could’ve flashed all these animated characterizations that kind of were paying homage to all different spy movies and all different movies.

Tom Pizzato:
I mean, you think about what you can do with animation there and tying, you know, you might have an image that’s on the screen for a second or a second and a half and then you’re onto the next one. I really think they missed an opportunity by not doing that.

DAN: Oh, that would’ve been fun.

TOM: Because if you talk to a kid about those two movies of, The Little Mermaid or Aladdin, those are two of the songs they’ll talk about.

All right. So that was a missed opportunity in my opinion. But there was one thing that they did in the end credits. The kind of irked me a little bit. First, a little bit of background about me. I’m an animation film fan and I collect animation cell art. These are the pictures that make up one frame of an animated movie. So, especially in the old school days, they would literally paint the picture onto a piece of acetate and take its picture.

Tom Pizzato:And that would become a frame in the movie. Now, in my opinion, the animation artist is equal, if not more important than the voice talent and the creation of a movie when it’s an animation film. So if you think, if you think about the animated movies by Disney, before Robin Williams was the genie in Aladdin, can you name two other voices in a Disney movie prior to Robin? Most people can’t unless you’re a geek like me and I know most of them. Okay. But you know the characters by sight, you know, you know the visual of the character that the animator created by sight.

In many JAMES BOND movies, the actor who physically performs the role may not be the actor whose voice you hear. So do you know who dubbed the voice for Honey Rider in Dr. No? Or Draco in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service?

Tom Pizzato:
Or did you know that Michael Collins dubbed the English version of the voice of Auric Goldfinger in Goldfinger? Yes. The voice talent is important and needs to be credited, but so do the animation artists or directors or the animation directors for the various characters in an animated movie. Unfortunately, EON Productions hasn’t done that with the BOND character voices. They’re all uncredited. Spies in Disguise doesn’t credit the artist with their character. What I really like to see is in some of the Disney films, they actually credit, you’ll see it in a box where it’s like, here’s the character and then here’s the voice, here’s the animation team behind it to really give the crediting and the fact that both pieces are pretty much equally important and I think that’s a good practice. I wish they had done it here. Okay. Now this whole dialogue about the voice talent here and crediting is all about the credit.

Tom Pizzato:
I’m not saying the voice casting wasn’t good. It was actually very good. It really was. And you know, like Will Smith,  I go hot and cold with Will Smith. He voiced this really well.

DAN: Yeah, I thought all the trailers I saw were well done.

TOM: And Tom Holland voices Walter really well. Rachel Brosnahan, Rashida Jones, Reba McEntire, Karen Gillan there, and others voiced the large roles and they did a really good job. I just wish that the crediting for the animator who was there. So I’m going to get off my soapbox now.

DAN: I was going to say, take a step down.

Tom: I’m sorry. I just that’s one of those things that just annoy me. I think Spies in Disguise does what it tries to do quite well. It’s a spy movie that’ll get many kids hooked on spy movies. You should be happy to take a kid to see it.

Tom Pizzato: Keeping in mind that it in the US is rated PG, not G, so there is a bit of violence or nothing rough and a few explosions and a bad guy. There are a couple of adult-themed innuendos that are in here. There’s one if you’ll see the trailer for it and right when he takes the potion that starts to turn him into a pigeon, his hands shrink and then he looks down his pants. It’s, it’s quick, but it’s one of those things that, you know, little kids won’t catch it, but the little bit older kids will snicker at it. And then again, there is a villain here. The movie does pay homage to the real world and other spy movies without feeling like it was trying to rip anything off: Unlike Charlie’s Angels. And it really was fun to watch.

Just don’t expect to see the same level of film you’re going to see if you’re going to a MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE or a JAMES BOND film. Now, if you aren’t going to go with a child, you might not want to run out to see it. And I’m not sure it was, it was fine. I enjoyed it. But like, you know, Dan, you didn’t run out and see it because you didn’t have it. Right. But if you have kids or nephews or nieces, you can go ahead and take them and have a guilty pleasure. So let’s go ahead and end this thing. I need to get some Kitty Glitter.

Dan Silvestri:
All right, that’s good. This has been Dan Silvestri and Tom Pizzato. We appreciate you listening as together. We’re Cracking the Code of Spy Movies. Check us out at our website. https://spymovienavigator.com. Please subscribe to our show through your favorite podcast app. Participate in our podcast by sending us a voice message through our website or a message through Facebook about any of our podcasts. Questions you’d like answered, comments or podcasts you’d like us to do.