Worth: $15.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Various
Intro:
… maintains that enviable balance between taking the piss out of spy cliches, delivering on said spy cliches, and a lingering note of sweetness.
Loid: Loving father, also gentlemen spy known as Twilight.
Yor: Loving mother, also cold-hearted assassin known as the Thorn Princess.
Anya: Peanut-loving daughter, also mind-reader.
Bond: Adorable floofball of a dog, also clairvoyant.
Together, they are the Forger family, a spy operation put together in secret by Twilight as part of a bigger plan to help maintain peace between two nations. Their stories, as chronicled in the smash hit series Spy X Family, brings out the hilarious side of the paranoia-strewn edges of spy fiction, amping up the stakes over mundane tasks while everyone remains blissfully unaware of just about everything happening around them… and yet managing to win the day in spite of that. And after experimenting with serialised adventures, like the multi-part cruise ship arc, they are finally on the big screen.
In true franchise fashion, the story takes a slice-of-life scenario (a dessert-making competition at Anya’s school) into an action spy romp (travelling to a specific restaurant to get a recipe for said dessert, while foiling an enemy MacGuffin plot along the way). The animation from Wit Studio and CloverWorks, while not necessarily making the most out of the lengthier format, holds up to the series’ standard for delivering equal parts hilarity, insanity, and cuteness.
The characters are all in prime form, from Twilight’s cool slickness to Yor’s erratic need to please, to Anya serving as the telepathic glue holding everything together, to Bond… being Bond. Their antics stick to what has already been established in-universe, including Twilight basically being Ethan Hunt if he was dropped into the middle of Burn After Reading. While it doesn’t shake up the formula all that much, it not only delivers on what makes the series so enjoyable, but even serves as a solid entry point for new viewers in search of their next giggly binge-watch.
Of course, par for the course for this series is still way out in Cloudcuckooland, as the Forgers’ encounters with evil military strongmen, gun-touting cyborgs, and what can only be described as Captain Underpants if it was animated by Studio Ghibli, all make for excellent incredulous comedy. It maintains that enviable balance between taking the piss out of spy cliches, delivering on said spy cliches, and a lingering note of sweetness. As easily as it will make audiences double-back in laughter at the fact that, yes, this is actually happening on-screen, it’s just as likely to attach an unshakeable ‘d’awww!’ expression on their faces for the full near-two-hour runtime.
Spy X Family Code: White holds back on the special effects that most anime-continuation films rely on nowadays, and instead doubles down on the deeply unserious slapstick and bizarrely wholesome family dynamics of its main characters, as they explore yet another situation that is much simpler than any of their inner monologues can comprehend. It admittedly could’ve hit with a bit more of a bang for its transition to the cinemas, but purely as a continuation of the series thus far, it’s still a mission worth accepting.
