Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Family Plan’ on Apple TV+, a Weirdly Violent Mark Wahlberg Action-Comedy Intended For Families

Mark Wahlberg headlines The Family Plan (now streaming on Apple TV+) and, um, I’m struggling to come up with anything else notable about the movie. Maybe I could point out that Michelle Monaghan co-stars, marking the second time she’s shared the screen with Wahlberg, after 2016’s Patriots Day. Is that notable enough? I guess so. Otherwise, this is a purported family-friendly movie that’s an action/road-trip comedy about a dad who’s also secretly a reformed government assassin and I can hear you yawning already. But maybe it’ll eventually wake you up? Let’s find out.

THE FAMILY PLAN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We open in Buffalo, New York to the smarmy tones of Dan Morgan (Wahlberg) delivering a laying-it-on-a-bit-thick sales pitch. He sells used cars, which tells us already that he’s duplicitous, but we don’t know the half of it yet, since half of him is a near-saintly family man and the other half has killed dozens of people. But let’s not get ahead of the plot yet. Dan hocks “certified pre-owned” vehicles then drives through his generic suburban neighborhood to his cookie-cutter McHouse. He’s been married to Jessica (Monaghan) for 18 years, and it’s their anniversary. They have two teenagers, Nina (Zoe Colletti), a would-be journalist on the cusp of college, and Kyle (Van Crosby), who’s such a hardcore video-gamer, his in-person social life is kaput. And then there’s baby Max (Iliana and Vienna Norris), who’s maybe a year old, and surely a happy oopsie. They live a rigorously routine life where they eat tacos every Wednesday and Mom and Dad have sex on Thursdays and it’s all on the whiteboard calendar except maybe the shtoinking. Everything is perfect. Perfect!

OK, it’s not quite perfect. The teens are angsty because nobody approves of Nina’s desire to follow her dirtbag boyfriend to college in Iowa, and Dan forced Kyle to quit gaming because he’s way too obsessed with it. Besides, Dan doesn’t like violence, and the game Kyle plays is one of those first-person blow-dudes’-heads-off shooter games. Meanwhile, Jessica goes to kickboxing class, where she meets Maggie Q when she accidentally punches her in the face, and if you think that’s just a bit to build character, well, you shouldn’t think that, not at all, because this is one of those movies where everything that happens in the first act sets up something in the third. Dan and Jessica go out for their anniversary and he’s confronted and emasculated by a jerkwad, and that’s when we sense there’s More To This Guy Than Meets The Eye – but he doesn’t wallop the guy’s ass. He simmers for a moment, then walks away, swallowing the humiliation.

And then. You were waiting for that, right? An and then? You bet you are. AND THEN: Dan has little Max in the baby bjorn at the grocery store when a bad guy starts blasting away at him right there in the frozen-foods aisle. “Really?” says Dan, who then proceeds to dive away from gunfire and beat the piss out of the attacker while little Max is still attached, cooing and squeaking with excitement. Yes, really. The jig’s up. Dan heads home and pops open a secret compartment filled with cash, guns and fake passports. Time to vamoose. But the jig’s not up yet to the rest of the family, and Dan keeps them in the dark by following up a conversation he had the night before with Jessica about his lack of spontaneity by gathering everyone up and hitting the road for a vacay to Vegas. Surprise! Dan throws everyone’s phones out the window so they can’t be tracked and takes advantage of contrived plotting so the wife and kids don’t even wake up when they’re chased by motorcycle assassins in Iowa, all none the wiser to these deadly shenanigans! Meanwhile, we get so many baby reaction shots, they become foundational to a movie that’s in dire need of better foundational components.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The Family Plan is Grosse Pointe Blank meets The Pacifier meets Nobody meets What Happens in Vegas meets RV (yes, RV) meets John Wick-in-core-concept-only.

Performance Worth Watching: At the very least, this movie exists to remind us that Monaghan has terrific, likable and versatile screen presence, but far too often has played The Wife or The Mom in thrillers and comedies, or The Token Female in action movies. She’s all of them in this one; you may deep-sigh here. Someone cast her as the lead in an Oscar-bait biopic, please.

Memorable Dialogue: “That’s normal honey. Everybody barfs their first time,” says Dan, which might be a meta-metaphor for the experience of watching The Family Plan – although it falls apart when you consider the probability of anyone watching it a second time.

Sex and Skin: A middleweight PG-13 scene that someone somewhere would have once labeled “sexual situations.”

Our Take: OK, I’m being a bit harsh. The Family Plan isn’t quite barf-worthy. But it is generic, contrived and predictable – and weirdly brutal for a movie that’s selling itself as lighthearted escapism for the whole fam damily. Nothing like a slickly directed, bloodlessly violent movie with scads of flatliner jokes and DOA twists to keep everyone entertained during the holidays! Or anytime, for that matter!

If you can look past that core miscalculation, which is a big one, this is remarkably easy to gut out thanks to the all-in performances from Wahlberg and Monaghan, the emergence of a glowering and nasty Ciaran Hinds in the third act and Simon Cellan Jones’ direction, which lends an accomplished and professional veneer to a movie that doesn’t deserve it in the slightest. It moves along quickly for a two-hour lark, each episodic plot-chunk illustrating how Assassin Dan’s skills help Boring Dad Dan better relate to his kids – and to Jessica, who finally gets to experience Assassin Dan’s significant bedroom prowess. 

Of course, there’s the inevitable Big Revelation where the wife and kids finally learn about his secret past, and if that’s not grounds for divorce, then the fact that he’s been holding back in the bedroom should, theoretically, push Jessica over the edge. But The Family Plan isn’t that kind of movie, since it fails to defy a single expectation in its backwards-ass attempt to convince us that Dan embracing his life as a semi-reformed killer of people actually improves his family life. Sure, one could argue that the story illustrates the importance of always being who you are and always being open and honest with those you love the most, and that it’s a movie about forgiveness and acceptance, but asserting that feels like kissing Divine on the lips while the credits run on Pink Flamingos.  

Our Call: Like a previous Apple TV+ exclusive, Ghosted, which is supposed to be witty and sexy and action-packed, The Family Plan is a well-made, well-cast bit of empty nonsense that evaporates quicker than whiz on the Vegas sidewalk in August. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.