An average suburban family becomes the target of contract killers—once again—while on Christmas vacation in Europe in The Family Plan 2, now streaming on Apple TV+. The modest achievements of the previous film have entirely evaporated in this family-action-adventure-comedy sequel, which somehow manages to even blander and more listless than the by-the-numbers film that preceded it, and wastes some terrific location shooting in London and Paris in the process.
The Family Plan was the most watched original film on Apple TV+ after it debuted nearly two years ago (it has since been surpassed by last year’s Wolfs), and so a sequel was inevitable. And never mind that Netflix released their own version of this concept earlier this year in Back in Action. Here’s the same film as last time, but somehow much, much worse.
Despite murdering their way through the events of The Family Plan, the Morgan family is back to their quiet suburban life in Buffalo, New York as The Family Plan 2 opens. Dan (Mark Wahlberg) now works as a security specialist with his cover as an elite former hitman exposed, but Jessica (Michelle Monaghan) still coaches track and field, their son Kyle (Van Crosby) is still a gamer, and daughter Nina (Zoe Colletti) is now studying abroad in London—which makes the perfect opportunity for a family trip over the holidays.
Enter Dan’s hitherto unmentioned half-brother Finn (Kit Harington), who sets out to take over their father’s criminal empire and uses Dan to help get into the London vault and retrieve the key—a literal key—that is all he needs to do so. Unsatisfied with merely taking control of billion-dollar empire, he puts out a contract on their lives, even though he could have eliminated Dan and Jessica himself just two scenes ago.
Oh no! The Morgans’ Christmas vacation is ruined. But not if they can get to Dan’s childhood home in Paris and stop him. But the film also wants to emphasize that all this could be resolved through a simple conversation: Finn isn’t really a bad guy, he’s a result of his father’s abandonment. And so we get a series of listless action scenes with zero stakes—unlike the first film, there’s minimal violence and no deaths here. That’s not inherently a bad thing, but in a movie about assassins and killers, it drops the stakes to zero. At no point are we ever invested in the outcome of what’s happening onscreen.
A strong supporting cast livened up The Family Plan, and they try their best here, too: Harrington is putting more effort into the material than the leads, and Sanjeev Bhaskar as the McCaffrey’s butler and Sidse Babett Knudsen as Dan’s old Russian flame do what they can with limited material. But David Coggeshall‘s screenplay never gives them anything interesting to do.
The events of The Family Plan 2 largely take place in London and Paris, and unlike the first film—shot in Georgia, doubling for Las Vegas and other locales—this one really does stage some impressive action set pieces in major European capitals. But it only stages them. They’re so incoherently edited that what ends up onscreen is the only suggestion that action has taken place.
One of the best action scenes ever put to film was in John Wick: Chapter 4, when Keanu Reeves‘ hero fights to the top of the stairs outside the Sacré-Cœur Basilica in Montmartre—a breathless combination of both real-world location and stunt work. Impressively, The Family Plan 2 stages a chase scene at the same location, as the family drives a car down the very same steps to outrun the assassins on their tail.
But what should have been the film’s centerpiece is a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment: there are 2-3 seconds of footage of the chase at this location—most of the scene consists of close-up shots of the family’s bumpy ride, captured in studio at another time. Incredibly, the filmmakers really did drive a Trabant and a Range Rover down these steps—only for the practical stuntwork to be largely edited out of the finished product. The film’s big climax—set and at least partially filmed within the Notre-Dame Cathedral!—is similarly mishandled, and the grandeur of the location (or even where the location is) is likely to go unnoticed among most viewers. What a waste!
One of the funniest moments in The Family Plan 2 appears to be entirely unintentional. After spending much of the film in picturesque locations throughout London and Paris, a hard-cut to a dilapidated family home in Columbus, Ohio badly in need of lawn care is achieved with near-comic precision. “The house looks great!” one of the characters exclaims without a hint of irony. What?
The Family Plan 2 is made with the same slick car commercial aesthetic as the first film by director Simon Cellan Jones, and one gets the feeling that he shot a lot of material better than what made it into the finished film. Ultimately, the sequel lacks the energy, coherence, and occasional charm that made the original passable. What remains is a disappointing waste of your time that ticks off another date in the streaming calendar before it disappears into the nether.
