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Script Review (Odds ‘n’ Ends Edition): The Spy Next Door by Joe Ballarini

[In lieu of actual content, for the next several weeks I will present, at least, one review of an upcoming film each week. These are scripts that I’ve been paid money to read, and many of them contain watermarking, identification numbers, password-protection, and other ways of tracking what company it was sent to; because of this and my desire to keep my job, I will not offer downloads for ANY of the scripts I review here. Don’t bother asking.]

Has it been almost a month? Jeez, my combo of laziness and apathy sure make the time fly. Here’s the problem with February: with the exception of Dread and most of Frozen, I didn’t get paid to read any of those scripts. Not a single one. And honestly, I just couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm to read the copies of The Wolfman, Shutter Island, and A Couple of Dicks (a.k.a. Cop Out) that I’ve had sitting on my hard drive for months, specifically for last month. I just said, “Fuck it.” When I can’t muster up the enthusiasm to want to see these movies, imagine how hard it is to get me the scripts when you aren’t waving a check in my face. And even that bites me in the ass. (Yeah, I just finished doing my taxes — I always forget what a shit-ton I end up having to pay because I’m technically “self-employed” and, therefore, my pay isn’t taxed until I get my 1099-MISC, fill out all those stupid forms, and shout obscenities when I see the amount I owe.)

I’ll be honest: March probably won’t fare much better. The majority of scripts I planned to review got delayed. Hot Tub Time Machine is the lone exception, so those of you who are into these reviews can look forward to that in a few weeks. I also read a script that’s a lot like Brooklyn’s Finest, but it’s not Brooklyn’s Finest, so maybe I’ll toss that up for shits and giggles. Otherwise, I’ll either be dusting off odds ‘n’ ends like I am today, or I’ll actually produce real content. By that, I mean I’ll do my Andy Rooney schtick about current Hollywood conventions that I don’t like. I’ll probably also talk a little more about masturbation and/or why my friends are all idiots.

Anyway, enough of my bullshit… Let’s enjoy a review of a script you’ll probably never read, which in no way resembles the film it turned into!

Remember the basic setup to Action? (Hint: not to alienate you, gentle reader, more than usual, but if you don’t know what I’m talking about, and you’re interested in screenwriting, something in your life has gone awry.) Dorky nobody writer suddenly finds himself approaching the A list simply because one of the biggest producers in Hollywood confuses him for an established writer? I had a similar situation crop up about a year ago, when I received the screenplay for Joe Ballarini’s The Spy Next Door. I thought little of receiving it, because I’d been deluged with not just spy scripts but wacky, In-Laws-esque spy comedies. But something weird happened. As I often do, I Googled information about the movie shortly after finishing the coverage and disocvered, to my surprise, that Jackie Chan had signed on to star.

“Huh,” I thought. “He doesn’t seem like a very good fit for either of the main characters.” I prepared to dismiss it, assuming they’d done some rewrites to adjust the role to Chan (after all, the draft I read was dated 2002 — a lot of development may have happened since then), when I noticed something even odder: the plot described Chan as a spy who agrees to babysit his next-door neighbor’s kids.

“The fuck?” I thought. This description had virtually nothing to do with the script I’d read, other than the title. More than that, the IMDb didn’t credit Ballarini at all (nor, would I eventually learn, did the film itself) — in fact, the only reference I could find was a USC alumni magazine interview with Ballarini in which he briefly mentions selling the script. I don’t have a clue if this script went through such a long, arduous development process that it bears no resemblance to its source, or if two completely different scripts just happened to have the same title. It made me wonder if my bosses had simply requested the wrong script from the wrong people — and that’s still a possibility. I don’t know all the details, and I don’t have much interest in researching it.

Nevertheless, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at this script, because whatever the story behind it, it’s essentially an unproduced script that likely won’t see the light of day. However, unlike the many legendary unproduced scripts floating around by the likes of Shane Black, Ron Bass, and Joss Whedon, this incarnation of The Spy Next Door comes from a relative unknown. That makes it a little bit special. It’s not a script that sold because it treads on the name of a well-known writer. It sold because someone, somewhere, for some reason, decided not that it was good, but that it could make money.

So what’s this mystery script about? It starts with the straightforward story of British lothario/superspy Ian Sterling (would it shock you to learn he looks and acts a great deal like James Bond?) going undercover as a suburbanite. He moves in next door to Roy Banner, a bored accountant and family man who’s looking for a little adventure. Ian moves in next door to the Banners with his “wife” (another spy) Moira, but he instantly rubs Roy the wrong way. Suspicious (and a little jealous) of the too-suave, too-debonair Ian, Roy pays careful attention during an awkward welcoming dinner thrown by Roy’s cheerful wife, Ellie. Roy notices Ian wearing a shoulder-holstered gun and Moira’s precision and apparent enthusiasm for vegetable chopping. He does some digging at work and finds neither of them have filed income taxes, ever, despite their claims of living in the U.S. for 15 years. The pieces don’t add up, and Roy’s not smart enough to suspect what’s going on.

When a noise from next door awakens him, Roy sneaks out of his house and follows Ian, who’s taking his dog out for a midnight stroll. When the dog starts spewing fire, Ian is forced to incapacitate Roy and bring him into the fold: he and Moira are spies, their handler is a genetically engineered 10-year-old (posing as their son), and the dog is a surveillance robot. After having groused about Ian’s incompetence in assimilating to the suburban lifestyle, Wolfgang takes this opportunity to pair up Roy and Ian. Roy can teach Ian to be a regular guy, so as not to blow his cover. This turn of events — the cleverest in the entire script — lasts for approximately half a scene. Really, pairing them up has little to do with a wacky odd couple scenario and has everything to do with bringing Roy in as an official partner. He wants adventure? Well, he’s got it.

From here on out, the plot grows exceptionally convoluted: Roy has to balance his normal work and home life with secret spy adventures. See, Ian and his pals have traced a Blofeld-like master spy to the neighborhood, and it turns out the place has been a hotbed of master-criminal activity for years, unbeknownst to the Banners. All of this is a little bit like the Hank Scorpio episode of The Simpsons, minus the hammock jokes and hilarious theme song. Ultimately, Roy outs the master spy as Jerry, his longtime friend and coworker. Jerry has a death ray, and both sides fight with the help of spy gadgets (most prominently, a set of sentient Pokémon-like stuffed animals and some robotic pink flamingos). Between this is a second act that layers on one weird, unnecessary plot twist after another, until the final showdown at the local lodge hall.

As you may have noticed, the script derives most of the comedy by combining clichés of suburbia (many of them — pink flamingos, lodge meetings, Howard Johnson’s, Tupperware parties — dated when The Flintstones satirized them 40 years ago) with spy-movie clichés. It also seems as if Ballarini has made his plot as outlandish and complicated as possible for comic effect, but all of this stuff has been done better elsewhere (including in some of those other spy scripts I read that haven’t come out yet).

On a related note, it’s sort of interesting to note how quickly the pop-culture landscape changes: it wasn’t long ago that The Ricki Lake Show and Pokémon were cutting-edge, topical references. Think about that the next time you’re working on a script that attempts to mine laughs from topical references: will they hold up? Let’s say you sell the script tomorrow — best case scenario, the movie won’t be released for 2-3 years. I bet you’re regretting that Sylar joke, aren’t you, comedy writers visiting from March of 2007? It’s never easy to tell whether or not a topical joke or reference will hold up, so here’s my advice: just don’t do it. I think that might be why so many kitschy ’80s references are “in” now: if it’s 20 years old and the cultural zeitgeist still remembers New Edition, that’s a safe reference. Well, that and the fact that most of the retards running Hollywood now came of age in the ’80s, so they laugh like hyenas any time someone says, “Pass the Dutchie on the lefthand side.”

I think I might be getting off topic.

The Spy Next Door is not a bad script. It’s also not an exceptional script, but it has a decent enough concept. That’s the thing I can’t figure out: if this is the same Spy Next Door that morphed into the Jackie Chan movie, then why did they buy it? I can understand buying a script for its concept and then gutting everything except the concept — but with this, it seems like the gutted everything but the title, and the title isn’t particularly strong.

The main flaw with the script is that Ballarini tries too hard to make the plot funny, without spending much time on making the characters funny. We pretty much have two bland straight men in a wacky, over-the-top plot. The first act gives us the Cliff’s Notes on who they are, but who they are doesn’t seem to matter as much as where they are and why they’re there. Did that make any sense? Let me put it another way: nothing about either of them matters except that one is an exciting James Bond and the other is a bored suburbanite looking for adventure. This only matters because of the wacky “spies in suburbia” plot. It tries to pass itself off as an odd-couple story, but the “couple” is pretty evenly matched, in terms of temperament and intellect — they just happen to have different areas of expertise. The script doesn’t even mine this for comic potential.

This became my biggest issue with the script: I know I’ve never seen talking dolls come to life and attempt to kill spies, but that doesn’t mean I want to, and the weirdness of developments such as that do little to mask the fact that this is a straightforward spy comedy in an unusual setting. It’s just not as interesting or as sharp as it could be, and that infuriated me because Ballarini presents a golden opportunity for a much more interesting story that hasn’t been overdone: the story of a suave British spy/playboy/gadabout who simply cannot blend in to American life, but (for reasons it’s not my job to make up) it’s crucial to his mission to do so. Enter Roy, the world’s most average guy — a guy who wants a little adventure and is kind of irritated to learn he’s only needed because he’s so boring. Just try to imagine Sean Connery circa 1964 trying to blend in to the modern suburbs; the mental picture is funnier than anything in this script, so it’s a big disappointment that the “Roy teaches Ian how to act like a suburbanite” development goes nowhere — in fact, most of the second act focuses on Ian teaching Roy how to act like a spy, not the other way around.

Similarly, Roy’s loosely defined “arc” seems to follow this trajectory: he resents his family, who prevent him from going on the adventures he seeks. Over the course of the story, he learns two things: (1) once he gets a taste of adventure, he decides it’s not for him, and (2) when his family is inevitably placed in danger in the third act, he realizes how important they actually are to him. This is solid, conceptually, but Ballarini never really digs into it. He’s too busy focusing on how wacky and complicated the story is to take a step back and show how the characters feel about the plot developments. I’d rather go one step further and eliminate 60-70% of the plot twists in favor of more natural, character-focused comedy as Ian struggles to assimilate and Roy sees a pathetic reflection of himself in this man who’s so resistant to transforming into a lazy, bourgeois bore.

See, there’s a lot under the surface of The Spy Next Door, but there are too many distractions for it to go in a truly satisfying, unique direction. This may be why it went from a flawed but not awful depiction of a superspy and an everyman…to a story about Jackie Chan babysitting a bunch of annoyingly precocious kids and surprising pets while spies invade the premises. Development’s a funny process: sometimes, it can greatly improve a script (have you actually sat down and read Chinatown? Very different from the movie, and not in a good way…), but sometimes, executives just head in the absolute wrong direction.

Posted by Stan on March 3, 2010 9:04 PM  | Permalink  | Print-Friendly  | Reviews | Digg It