Playing With Fire

There is an OK movie trapped in here. It needs someone to helicopter in and lift it out.

It turns out that sluggishly edited shots of big men pushing trolleys and buying plush toys is not, in fact, an adequate replacement for writing some funny lines.

The cast are so willing to put their egos aside -- like a children's party clown on their last resort -- that it's easy to be won over by all the goodwill on show.

As they used to say in Mad magazine: yecch.

This might matter if we had been encouraged to care more about the kids' fate, but the script is so bad that you care instead about the actors and their vain efforts to do something with its cliches.

Playing with Fire makes increasingly strange choices that feel feel like the film itself is mocking the people who the smokejumpers have to save.

...periodically watchable yet predominantly forgettable...

Playing With Fire is relatively inoffensive, but this four-men-and-three-babies spin borders on tedious.

Playing with Fire isn't a great movie but it's good, clean fun.

Playing with Fire isn't Backdraft for kids. There are some fiery action scenes but kid friendly awkward humour is the name of the game here.