‘Back in Action’ Review: Cameron Diaz and Jamie Foxx are spies turned parents

But we do Wordle!!

Um, okay. That’s how ex-secret agent Matt (Jamie Foxx) explains that he and wife Emily now live a boring, mundane, glamor-free life, and no one would ever be looking for them.

To which we fellow Wordle players say: Whoa, speak for yourself, Matt! Many of us play Wordle and we don’t think WE ARE boring or mundane.

In any case! More to the point, Matt’s explanation obviously isn’t working, because within moments he and Emily are, well, “Back in action.” It’s not only the title of director Seth Gordon’s film, but the story of Foxx’s co-star, Cameron Diaz. Back in movies after more than a decade, Diaz maintains her easy charm and chemistry with Foxx.

But that doesn’t mean their lines are funny or logical. Often they are neither.

We started 15 years ago, in a pre-credit sequence with our ultra-cool co-spies (also lovers). Their job is to pose as French arms dealers visiting the home of a shadowy Russian terrorist – then break into a safe and steal a key to the entire world’s infrastructure or something.

On the private plane on the way home, Emily reveals a secret we already knew: her pregnancy test at home was positive. Actually, all six of them were.

Matt says he’s all in. They break out the champagne (well, for him.) And then all hell breaks loose and they end up having to kill a bunch of people and parachute into the snowy mountains. It’s actually funny when Matt notes, “We can’t keep doing this, especially with that baby on the way.”

Flash forward 15 years. and the couple who have gone underground live in a cozy suburban house with two lovely (and not so annoying) teenagers. Matt coaches the soccer team. The teenagers, Alice and Leo (McKenna Roberts and Rylan Jackson, both appealing), are unaware of their parents’ high-flying past; Matt and Emily want their lives to be normal.

Director Gordon, who co-wrote the script with Brendan O’Brien, has said he aimed to explore what can happen when spies become parents. (This was brilliantly addressed in “The Americans” on FX, but that was a whole other thing.) Now, not knowing too many spy couples, or anyone, I’m pretty sure what’s going on is NOT that the parents become SO uncool SO quickly that they buy binoculars on Amazon to spy on their daughter’s social life from the car at school drop-off. Guys, at least hide so she doesn’t see you. Did CIA training teach you nothing?

Equally artless is the way they explain their past to their children. We join this conversation as the kids wonder why dad was speaking Russian to the AC guy. The parents explain that they picked it up during their time in the Peace Corps. But they don’t even have their stories straight: were they in Colombia, Belize or Russia? Again, they had 15 years to get it straight.

All is peaceful in the suburbs, sort of, except Emily is having trouble connecting with her daughter Alice (could it be because she’s spying on her?) She’s also getting bored and wonders if she and Matt can have a quick fling down to South America and stop a coup somewhere – or heck, start one! No matter what! And then the doorbell rings with a long-lost contact, and Matt and Emily claim Wordle and Etsy, but soon they’re pulled back in and the whole family is on the run.

You should also know that Emily has both a past with a jealous MI6 agent (Andrew Scott) and a complicated relationship with her mother (Glenn Close, game for broad comedy), who lives on a large estate in England, was also a spy , and has enthusiastic but terrible taste in men.

The action comes fast and furious and the banter is pleasant enough. Diaz in particular makes the proceedings decently entertaining and some of the sillier lines believable.

It all leads to some predictable questions: Will Emily and her estranged mother find some common ground? Will the children come to understand their parents? Will Emily and Alice make a truce? Want to have a good time learning about the family adventure?

And what is Matt’s Wordle streak?

“Back in Action,” a Netflix release, has been rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association “for sequences of violence and action, some suggestive references and strong language, and brief teenage revelry.” Running time: 114 minutes. Two stars out of four.