Review by Jon Donnis
I am a big Owen Wilson fan, so when I heard about this new film starring Owen Wilson as a super hero, I was very excited to see it.
Unfortunately, Owen Wilson is more of a cameo on the film, and instead this is a kid's film in the style of Spy Kids.
The story starts out with Jack Kincaid (Owen Wilson) coming across a crashed alien ship, an alien ball then chooses him to be "The Guard" and bestows upon him special powers. So far so good.
The film then quickly changes into a story about a neglected kid Charlie Kincaid (Walker Scobell), missing his dad, or more accurately his dad missing big life events of the child because he is "busy". What the kid doesn't know is that his dad is really The Guard, a superhero, and that is the real reason he is neglecting him.
One day by accident Charlie and his friends accidentally unlock the entrance to The Guard's "Secret Headquarters", they then find themselves having to defend the Secret Headquarters from the bad guys. After about an hour Wilson turns up and along with the kids fight off the bad guys using futuristic gadgets.
This is a 100% kids' film, and ticks all the boxes for cliches, diversity, the usual action scenes, toilet humour and so on.
The Good
Intriguing start, and a fun ending give the film a nice bookmark at each end.
The Bad
The lack of Owen Wilson will disappoint a lot of his fans of watch for him.
Overall
A paint by numbers kids action film. Will keep the kids happy for 90s. Not much for adults though.
I score Secret Headquarters a safe 6/10
Out now on Paramount+ and Amazon Prime at https://amzn.to/3QIJLFg
