Carry-On

Netflix has really cranked out the original content this year. Some of it good, some of it really really not but that is a separate discussion. We will now be diving into the plethora of original films Netflix has come out with this year. Starting with Carry-On, a new Jason Bateman film that is by all means a Christmas movie. Now I don’t have a lot of faith in Netflix’s original movies. They are more often than not, truly terrible, but it came out in 2024 which means that it is on the watch list.

The opening scene is Jason Bateman shooting a guy and setting a greenhouse on fire. And then he takes a Christmas ribbon? Reveal a carry-on suitcase. How on the nose.

This couple is working in LAX, when Jason Bateman’s character arrives. Our other main character is a TSA agent. His girlfriend is pregnant and so he all of a sudden wants to be good at his job and we are supposed to care about that apparently.

The target of this weird heist movie is one of the other TSA against. There is still no actual reveal as to what the plot line of this movie is. Who gets a text from a random number with directions and actually follows them? Especially in a job with literally tons of security around you? How stupid is this guy? All we really know is that these guys want him to let something through. The fact that this whole plot would be shot if the main character weren’t just so fucking stupid.

Also…they contacted him like a billion hours go by and they still haven't tried to get this bag through yet. Jason Bateman plays a terrorist, though he has convinced himself that he is not a villain, but he was willing to kill children soooo.

They are focusing a lot of this movie on the actual getting the bag through TSA which seems like a ridiculous premise I am genuinely confused as to how this got greenlit at all.

They are also trying to get us to care. Taron’s character is supposed to be unmotivated, with no goals and ambition but we only know that because they told us. Basically this situation is so that he will actually do something with his life, but we don’t actually know anything about him because that’s not the story that they are telling at all. And he also isn’t doing anything but what he’s been told? He’s actually useless. And the biggest flaw in this is that Taron just isn’t believable as a useless, aimless waste of space. He’s too cut, he’s too conventionally attractive, it just doesn’t work.

Then we of course have the FBI agent investigating all of this, but she’s useless because everything is already going down and she can’t stop it. So her involvement in the story is a little irrelevant.

Classic trolly problem set up, do you risk the lives of an entire plane to spare the life of someone you care about? This weak ass motherfucker absolutely is letting a whole plane full of people potentially die. He also got his friend fired in order to do this so really he’s run over like 300 people to save a girl he’s not even married to, so how serious can they be really?

So not only is the plot built on sand but the pacing is just terrible. So not only did they take forever between contact and actual follow through but then after this bag actually gets through TSA there is just so much more movie left. It is really dragging on.

God Ethan is so useless. It's really hard to watch an entire film when the main character is so unlikeable. You can’t even call him a protagonist because he isn’t driving the story, he doesn’t DO anything.

HOW IS THERE STILL 45 MINUTES LEFT OF THIS MOVIE. God the pacing is just the worst.

The scale of this conspiracy is interesting I guess, it's just extremely poorly executed.

So there aren't enough actual action scenes to call this an action movie. But it doesn’t have enough tension to call it a drama or thriller. Really it's nothing. The plot is flimsy, the character development and depth is nonexistent, the pacing is terrible. The FBI lady was super unnecessary, they tried way too hard to make this a character driven story but they failed spectacularly. Overall I don’t think the movie deserves anything more than a 5/10 and I think even that is a little generous.