The Family Plan (2023)

The Family Plan is a glossy Apple product, a minivan road trip with a body count, and it wears its social conscience the way a man wears a gym membership he purchased in January. The wife longs for spontaneity and finishes the picture impaling the villain with a bamboo javelin, a flourish of track-and-field empowerment the movie treats as punchline and plot mechanics in the same breath. The supporting cast includes Maggie Q, Saïd Taghmaoui, and Felicia Pearson, hired for their competence and never once asked to remark on their own presence. The family at the center is white, suburban, and entirely untroubled. Nobody in the minivan has an identity crisis worth naming.

That is the full extent of the film's cultural bookkeeping. No character wrestles aloud with who they are. No speech explains the audience to itself. No corporation is indicted for the crime of existing, a small mercy given that Apple financed the thing. The premise, assassin turned car salesman, could have been aimed at something: the violence we sell, the wealth we envy, the suburbs we pretend are safe. The film declines every target. It wants the toddler, the gaming streamer son, the chemistry lab brawl, and the penthouse shootout. It gets them. The result is efficient and hollow, like a showroom vehicle detailed to a high shine.

Reviews were unkind, which seems beside the point. The film became Apple's most-watched title for a while, then a sequel arrived, because that is how these things work now. This is a specimen of pure escapism with no message to deliver and no sermon to give. It is not a film with nothing to say. It is a film determined to say nothing, and it says it with professional polish. As cultural documents go, this one is a blank page in a very expensive binding.