The premise: A supervillain wants to kidnap a superhero’s babies in order to siphon their powers. A couple of high school kids end up babysitting the three babies, and have to try to protect them from both the supervillain and the military, which fears they are an existential threat.
Fe@rless is one of those representation-first films whose production team probably had their heart in the right place but the craftsmanship is not there. The 3D environments seem bare and unfinished, the set pieces are deflatingly disappointing, character progression feels forced and perfunctory, and the basic mechanics of the world are so poorly thought out that you’ll have to turn your brain off after the first major plot point: how the teenagers come into possession of the three superbabies.
The eponymous main character is a gamer and livestreamer (Fe@rLeSS_ is his gamer tag). On a day that he’s supposed to be working on a group project for school, he’s playing a superhero action game and setting records as the first person to reach certain parts of the game. The inciting incident occurs when the game forces him to accept a disclaimer which, after a series of fairly stupid events, warps the three superbabies out of the game and into the real world. When his partner for the school project arrives, she also gets roped into helping out.
Now, one would expect that the objective of the protagonists would be to return the children to the game. But as far as the movie is concerned, there’s no distinction between “in the game” and “in the real world”. As far as the viewer can tell, Earth and the game world inhabit the same real universe. The villain tracks the babies to Earth and just, y’know, flies there in his spaceship. For contrived reasons, the superhero dad can’t immediately make it to Earth to help the kids out. And the babies’ mother? She’s at a superhero space conference. PSA to all fathers everywhere: if your wife is at a conference when your children get kidnapped, probably still give her a call. Maybe?
So, did the videogame grant control over a real human being across interstellar distances? Or did the videogame materialize whole worlds, aliens, and people into existence the moment that Fearless accepted the disclaimer? You won’t find out by watching this film. The videogame through which literal babies are delivered into the main character’s living room is never discussed again.
The film isn’t terrible, but it isn’t good, and it reeks of “Hello, fellow kids.” It'd be easy to write out the videogame entirely and end up with functionally the same movie, and maybe the writers should have. It seems the only reason videogames are present is because “That’s something kids are into, right? They play games and stream themselves and have funny online names with symbols in them, right?”
The most amusement I got throughout the film was recognizing the voice of Jadakiss as the babies’ father, Captain Lightspeed. Though plot relevant, the character doesn’t get to do anything of interest. He comes off less like a superhero and more like an action figure pantomiming the superheroic. Think Buzz Lightyear, without the self-awareness and thematic layers.
All else being said, there are a few poop and fart jokes, so my 7-year-old liked it. Hooray for that.
Plot: 3
Characters: 5
Themes: 3
Spectacle: 6
Overall score: If this movie had a superpower, it was stolen by a villain before release.
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