The Family Plan 2
Former assassin Dan Morgan discovers that he has a brother he never knew when he takes his family to Europe to celebrate Christmas.
Americans in Paris: Van Crosby, Theodore Lindsey, Michelle Monaghan, Mark Wahlberg, Zoe Colletti and Reda Elazouar
Image courtesy of Apple TV+.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Christmas is all about family. And Dan and Jessica Morgan are determined to keep it that way, even if their twenty-year-old daughter Nina (Zoe Colletti) refuses to leave her new life in London for the occasion. So, Dan (Mark Wahlberg), now the head of Morgan Security Advisers in Buffalo, New York, and Jessica (Michelle), a triathlete coach, take their two youngest children with them to the London capital to celebrate an old-fashioned Yuletide. To pay for the trip, Dan has even engineered a brief but profitable assignation with a major City bank to test their security levels…
Formulaic doesn’t begin to describe The Family Plan 2, the festive sequel to the wide-eyed 2023 family caper that defied critical opinion to become the most watched movie on Apple TV+, like forever. There may be a reason that Mark Wahlberg can demand an average $22.5m per streaming title these days, in spite of critical brickbats and a spotted history at the box-office. Even with his encroaching years (the ex-model turns 55 this summer), viewers appear to adore him. He does seem to have an easy-going charm, a winning self-deprecation and can still move like a ninja, while mastering his one-liners with an effortless comic timing.
Among the disproportionate ingredients hurled into this Christmas pudding, plausibility isn’t one of them. To surprise his wife Jessica with a priceless necklace, Dan books her into an exclusive hotel room and then scales the outside of the building to enter via the bedroom window to give it to her. It makes no sense, but it duly impresses Jessica, because, hey, he’s still wooing her in spite of the fact that their first-born has now turned twenty (Ms Monaghan is evidently on the same age-resistant regime as her co-star).
Likeable characters, a close family dynamic and a few good lines force boredom at bay as the plot hurtles along in improbable directions while soaking up the best views of Paris and London (apparently, Piccadilly Circus is now perched on the edge of Westminster Bridge). There’s a generic plot involving a lost brother (Kit Harrington), consumed by revenge, which is rather unfair as Dan didn’t even know of his existence. Even so, Uncle Finn is now happy to kill his own kin in the pursuit of his satisfaction, having whisked up an army of henchmen from apparently nowhere. There’s no reasoning with the man. And suddenly, the lads’ childhood home materialises on the banks of the Seine, a Parisian palais stuffed to the gills with priceless works of art and an irreplaceable wine collection ready to be shredded by gunfire (all overseen by a passive Sanjeev Bhaskar as the butler).
This all comes as news to Jessica – as does a sword-wielding female assassin – but then she’s got a few secrets of her own that she’s kept from the family plan for the last couple of decades. These people! For those looking for a crash course in international action-comedy cliché, this is just the ticket, complete with some embarrassingly hackneyed needle drops (no, please, not ‘Ça Plane Pour Moi’ again!) and tech-savvy American teenagers who can infiltrate a worldclass firewall and security system.
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Michelle Monaghan, Zoe Colletti, Van Crosby, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Kit Harington, Peter Lindsey, Theodore Lindsey, Sanjeev Bhaskar, Reda Elazouar, Daniel de Bourg, Laurel Lefkow, Ismaël Sy Savané.
Dir Simon Cellan Jones, Pro Mark Wahlberg, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Don Granger, Stephen Levinson and John G. Scotti, Screenplay David Coggeshall, Ph Michael Burgess, Pro Des Nora Takacs Ekberg, Ed Yan Miles and Pani Scott, Music Kevin Matley, Costumes Lindsay Pugh, Sound Glenn Freemantle, Dialect coach Poll Moussoulides.
Apple Studios/Skydance Media/Municipal Pictures-Apple TV+.
107 mins. USA. 2025. UK and US Rel: 21 November 2025. Cert. 12.
