tek's rating:

Secret Headquarters (PG), on Paramount+ (doesn't seem to be on the site anymore, as far as I can tell)
IMDb; Paramount; Rotten Tomatoes; TV Tropes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; Google Play; Vudu; YouTube

First I want to say, I watched this on DVD, and that says the movie is 130 minutes, while the streaming sites say it's shorter than that. But it's probably not too important. Anyway, Owen Wilson plays a man named Jack Kincaid, who is out camping with his wife, Lily, and their son, Charlie. Overhead, a military jet fighter collides with a UAP (unexplained aerial phenomenon), and they both crash. Jack goes to investigate, and meets the pilot, Sean Irons, and they both examine the wreckage of the alien ship. They find a glowing orb, which chooses Jack as the "guardian".

Flash forward 10 years. The news is full of stories about a superhero called "the Guard", who has virtually eliminated things like war and crime, I guess. (It's pretty easy to guess that Jack is the Guard.) There's also the CEO of a weapons company, Ansel Argon (Michael Peņa), who isn't happy about this, and wants to find the source of the Guard's power, to use for himself. Meanwhile, we learn that Lily divorced Jack some time ago. Charlie is going to stay with Jack for his birthday (he's 14 now), but then Jack gets called away on "business". (Lily knows that he's the Guard, but Charlie doesn't, and he resents his dad always being away for work.) So Charlie pretends to call his mom to come pick him up, but actually he called his friend Berger to come over to his dad's place. Berger brings along a girl named Lizzie, on whom he has a crush and wants to ask to the upcoming school dance, as well as a girl named Maya, on whom Charlie has a crush. The four of them end up discovering the Guard's secret underground headquarters, full of all kinds of alien technology. Of course they start playing with it, and Argon's team that has been trying to track the Guard's power source discovers their location. He sends a team headed by Irons to obtain the source, and the kids have to try to defend the tech from the intruders. Also, Berger's older brother, "Big Mac", shows up for a date with Lizzie, which upsets Berger, though neither of them knew he was interested in her. Eventually Jack talks to Lily and realizes Charlie isn't with her, so he rushes back to his house to save the kids.

And that's all I want to reveal of the plot (I've probably said too much already). It's not a great movie, but I found to reasonably entertaining. I mostly think of it as a family film, but it's also an action comedy. And I think all three elements worked okay, most of the time. Again, none of it was great, but I do think it's a better movie than most critics give it credit for.


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