Time: 126 Minutes
Cast:
John Cena as Sean Walker
Jessica Biel as Aimee
Sam Richardson as Crosby
Arturo Castro as Ted
Director: Sam Hargrave

Following the success of Barbie, another Mattel product was adapted into a live action movie with the Matchbox movie. I really wasn’t expecting anything special from this, and my expectations were met, even if I found some enjoyment from it. 

Matchbox the Movie is a basic action comedy with barely any references to the toys it’s based on. Basically, the main characters were childhood friends known as the Matchbox Gang because they played with Matchbox cars. Also, later on there’s an action scene with cars where it cuts to a child who is playing with Matchbox cars. That’s it, it’s honestly funny that there weren’t even more references to Matchbox cars for a movie supposedly based on them. Not that it matters, this can easily be overlooked if the rest of the movie is special or entertaining on some level. Which it isn’t. As an action comedy, it’s very average. The plot is not interesting, you could swap it out with any cliche action plot and it would remain the same movie. Even having watched the movie recently, I’ve already largely forgotten what the plot was about. Most of the comedy is very clunky and doesn’t work. Any attempts at adding emotional depth feel so ingenuine and just tact on. The pacing can be sluggish, especially in the second act, and the movie feels stretched out. The plot lends itself much better to a 90 minute runtime, but for some reason it is over 2 hours long and feels even longer than that. 

Matchbox the Movie has a good cast here who are just fine here. The main characters in John Cena, Jessica Biel, Arturo Castro, Sam Richardson and Teyonah Parris at the very least have good chemistry with each other.

Sam Hargrave directs this, he previously helmed the Extraction movies. His work feels on Matchbox like a considerably worse and PG-13 version of Extraction, but it still helped to make the movie somewhat entertaining. The action is fun to watch, especially the driving sequences, even if a lot of the CGI is startlingly bad.

Matchbox: The Movie is a very generic, average, forgettable and overlong action comedy, even with an okay cast and enjoyable action.