Last week, Paramount+ unveiled its newest original film Secret Headquarters.
When Secret Headquarters begins, devoted dad Jack Kincaid (Owen Wilson) is on a camping trip with wife Lily (Jessie Mueller) and 4-year-old son Charlie (Louie Chaplin Moss). However, their family time is interrupted when Jack rushes to the scene of an aerial collision. Air Force Caption Sean Iron (Jesse Williams) leads Jack to the crash site, where the hatch of an alien spacecraft opens and selects Jack as the new guardian.
Jumping forward ten years and Charlie (Walker Scobell) is so used to having an absentee father that he finds himself becoming a fan of ‘The Guard’, a superhero saving the world. Meanwhile, Ansel Argon (Michael Peña) isn’t a fan of The Guard as he has been impacting the sales of his weapons of defence.
Things take a turn when Charlie is allowed to stay at his dad’s house while he attends a work emergency. Naturally, the teenager invites his best friend Berger (Keith L. Williams) over to play with his new Nintendo Switch, and Berger in turn extends an invitation to aspiring social media influencer Lizzie (Abbey James Witherspoon) and her friend Maya (Momona Tamada).
It isn’t long before the quartet discovers the basement full of gadgets, kick-starting a quest that will impact their entire world.
Based on a story by Christopher Yost, and written by Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman and Josh Koenigsberg, the film is mostly an easy watch, even if it does lack a deeper exploration of Jack and Charlie’s relationship. The young cast all shine alongside Wilaon and Peña.
Secret Headquarters may not reinvent the wheel of the superhero genre, but it’s a good family movie option.
3 Stars
Secret Headquarters is now streaming in Paramount+.
