Playing With Fire review

On paper Playing With Fire is a pretty basic movie in terms of plot. A group of Smoke Jumpers (lower class version of Firefighters) are tasked with looking after 3 kids after they rescue them from a burning cabin. What follows is ups, downs and a lot of fun as while the plot is simple it works in a lot of places and once the credits roll it's message is well and truly received. John Cena stars as Jake Carson a Superintendent of a group of Smoke Jumpers who are called in to help fires all across the country. He's a strict albeit soft man who lost both his parents at a young age. His father was also a Smoke Jumper and died while on duty. Carson's entire life evolves around being a Smoke Jumper with his ultimate goal of becoming Chief in command. Everything changes however when him and his crew are tasked with looking after 3 kids for a night as while their parents were away they somehow burned down the cabin they were staying in which led to them being rescued. It's incredibly simple but like I said earlier it works. 

John Cena is actually really good here. He never takes himself too seriously and is so painfully blind to the culture of young kids it's borderline cute. His crew are also fun too and they all bounce off one another in a good way including the kids too. There is some cringey moments however which mainly includes toilet humor which just isn't funny and it does get lost a bit in the middle as there is some stretched out scenes that offer little to the overall narrative. But Playing With Fire's message of learning to embrace family and make the most out of life was done surprisingly well. It's far from perfect but there is a lot of charm here from Cena's performance to the comedy moments which were pure slapstick. 

Playing With Fire is something you should not take seriously before hand. If you do you won't enjoy it, but if you don't take it seriously and just enjoy it for what it is there is a lot of fun to be had here. I don't know what it is about John Cena but he seems to be getting better with each movie and this is another good performance from him. This is one for the entire family no doubt about that. Enjoyable. 

★★★