Review of Mission Without Permission

Introduction

With the school holidays looming, and the young ones soon to be underfoot, it`s time to hit the local film emporium and stock up on fun and wholesome fare to keep them out of mischief. Actually, when isn`t there a time that school holidays don`t loom? Mission Without Permission, or to give it its US title, Catch That Kid is a potential 90 minutes of light-hearted fun made to keep those little `uns out of trouble, or is it?

Maddy is a twelve-year-old girl who idolises her father, and wishes to emulate him and become a climber. Her mother isn`t too keen on this, especially as her father injured his spine in a fall from the summit of Mount Everest. When his injury worsens and leaves him paralysed, the only chance he has is an experimental surgical procedure developed in Denmark that costs $250000. Maddy`s mother works as a security specialist for a bank, but the evil bank manager refuses to give them a loan. Maddy resolves to rob the bank for the cash, and enlists her friends Gus and Austin to help defeat the various security measures her mother`s firm has designed. She`ll also have to climb higher than she has ever done before to even get to the vault, and worse, on the night of the heist, she has to baby sit her little brother.

Video

This is one of those discs from Fox that regales you with trailers for other movies when you insert the disc. Fortunately you can skip these. The image for Mission Without Permission is presented in a 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer. There is little to say about the transfer of such a recent film. It`s clear and sharp, and there are plenty of primary colours. There is a surprising amount of grain though. Visual effects are more the rule than the exception nowadays, and the bank uses the kind of sophisticated holographic displays that you`d wish they`d just hurry up and invent.

Audio

The sound on this disc is a DD 5.1 English track. The surrounds are put to use for effects and music. It certainly gets lively as Go Karts go whizzing past, and the music is a mixture of lite-metal and skate rock. Subtitles are provided in English for the film and the extras.

Features

The extras amount to 8 minutes of deleted scenes, supplying more of the same and adding little to the movie, and an Inside Look featurette. This lasts 6 minutes and begins with a short behind the scenes look at Garfield the Movie. But this featurette hides a gem, for after the PR guff, there is an Ice Age short starring Scrat in Gone Nutty. This CG animation is probably the best thing on the disc, and I found myself laughing more during this animation than I did during the film. (When the animation starts, you`ll have to manually reset the ratio to anamorphic widescreen)

Conclusion

I`m not sure what to make of Mission Without Permission. It`s your average kids` caper with youngsters going up against ridiculous authority figures, and pulling one over on their elders. Like most similar movies in the genre, Kids are faced with adult problems and solve them in a fun and exciting way, guaranteed to get a few giggles from the audience. Naturally at the end, normality will be resumed as the adult world once again exerts its authority, but the end will be happy, heart-warming and there will probably be a moral to boot. This film fulfils its requirements for excitement and action, wacky characters, and cheap laughs (including the requisite fart gag).

The cast is suitably enthusiastic, with the child actors impressive enough. Kristen Stewart is good enough to carry the movie as tomboyish Maddy, and she is given good support by Corbin Bleu as Austin, and Max Thieriot as Gus. The adults join in the fun with the necessary gusto, with James Le Gros as a particularly sadistic security guard, who of course gets his own special brand of comeuppance.

There is much about this film that rankles me though, and I`m worried that it`s a sign of age on my part. For one thing, Maddy has problems with both Gus and Austin, who are sweet on her and would prefer it if the other disappeared. So to enlist both of them, she pretends to be their girlfriend just to get their help, and tells them to keep it secret from the other. Also the film starts with twelve-year-old Maddy climbing a water tower, unsupervised and then lying to her mother about it. Then there is the scene where they are speeding in Go Karts through city streets being chased by the police. If I don`t forget, the whole story hinges on three children lying and stealing, that is robbing a bank to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars. If mild profanity offends, you`ll want to steer clear of the occasional utterance of "buttmunch".

So if you sit your children down in front of this film, just so you can do something important elsewhere, you`ll probably come back to see that they have enjoyed it. But don`t be too surprised if you have the police knocking on your door, after the Bank of England has been robbed by a group of short people in balaclavas. You have been warned.