If you have played with toy cars, chances are you have played with Mattel’s Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars. It seems Mattel’s film division is still cooking the Hot Wheels feature, but was ready to send out Matchbox. But was it sent out to crash and burn on Apple TV+? In Matchbox: The Movie, John Cena stars as a former soldier turned spy named Sean Walker. He decides to reunite with his childhood Matchbox car-loving friends—played by Jessica Biel, Sam Richardson, Teyonah Parris, and Arturo Castro.
The entire group ends up drugged and kidnapped by bad guys looking for a nuclear warhead. It seems the CIA thinks Sean and his friends stole the nuke, so they decide to re-steal the bomb and get their lives back. Wacky action hijinks ensue, many involving real-life versions of some of Matchbox’s classic toy cars.
Director Sam Hargrave has been well-known for the Chris Hemsworth-led Extraction movies, but has taken on Matchbox: The Movie to expand his directing resume. If you did not know, Hargrave began as a stunt coordinator—working on major franchises like The Hunger Games films and multiple MCU movies, including Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. Off the rip, I found the stunts and action choreography in this film to be great.
There were a few set pieces that stood out to me, but nothing super crazy like in the first Extraction movie. Some vehicle stunts looked amazing because Hargrave loves to shoot practically. When vehicles are barrel rolling and getting crushed, sliced, or blown up in this film, it is actually happening. The coolest shot was a drone following a falling all-black Freightliner-esque commercial truck, tracking its full descent off a highway cliff.
With us already getting recent Mattel movies with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Travis Knight’s Masters of the Universe, Matchbox was okay for a toy-based movie. Hasbro films have been heavily carried by the Transformers and G.I. Joe movies, filled with quick pacing and pretty CGI and VFX work. Matchbox: The Movie contained awesome stunts and fairly solid fight choreography for a Hollywood film, but it did not have anything super special. It had heart and some cute romance baked in, but nothing crazily deep.
“Mattel has been taking some serious swings with action figures and toys-turned-to-film, but Matchbox: The Movie needed to be more than what we got with this story.”
The same general critique could be said about the cast and comedic lines throughout Matchbox: The Movie. Expect around three ‘matchbox’ jokes in the first ten minutes of the movie; I could not help but shake my head. I understand this movie is based on toy cars for children, but I did not expect to be thrown down memory lane of cheesy one-liners from growing up in the 1990s, with cringe 1980s bad dialogue with kids on-screen. By far, Richardson carried the comedy throughout the movie, and everyone else was either reacting or acting too seriously for this movie.
Composer Alex Belcher has collaborated with Hargrave on both Extraction movies, along with working on Prime Video’s hit series Citadel. The score of Matchbox: The Movie was as generic as action film music compositions can get. This could have been the score from any of the latest Jason Statham or Liam Neeson movies, and it would have blended right in.
Mattel has been taking some serious swings with action figures and toys-turned-film, but Matchbox: The Movie needed to be more than what we got. It worked as a good spy-comedy film and an older kids/family travel-comedy film, but never quite excelled at either genre. The highs were in its adrenaline junkie action, but it does not quite hit the landing cleanly on the overall story stunt jump. This is another well-produced Apple TV+ movie that may go under the radar, but is entertaining enough to put on for a family movie night with older kids.
