REVIEW: ‘Secret Headquarters’ Is More For Pre-Teens Than Die-Hard Superhero Fans

Secret Headquarters is a Paramount+ original movie directed by Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman. Charlie Kincaid (Walker Scobell) doesn’t exactly have a great relationship with his father (Owen Wilson) due to multiple work trips and broken promises. However, Charlie and his friends – including childhood buddy Berger (Keith L. Williams) and crush Maya (Momona Tamada) – soon discover that Mr. Kincaid isn’t all he appears to be. Indeed, Charlie’s father is the armored hero known as the Guard, and his office holds a secret entrance to his crimefighting headquarters and all of his tech. Charlie and friends start using the tech for pre-teen shenanigans but soon draw the attention of arms manufacturer Ansel Argon (Michael Pena), who seeks the Guard’s power.

The success of the superhero genre in film has led to many studios attempting to do their own original projects. That doesn’t sound like a bad idea at first; few comic book characters have had the staying power of those at Marvel and DC and ever so often they manage to put a new spin on well-worn tropes. Secret Headquarters somewhat attempts to do this, particularly in its question of what makes one worthy to wield a certain power. It also takes a realistic look at the strain a dual identity places upon a superhero’s life, as well as the lengths corporations will go to in order to obtain resources for profit.

On the other hand, there are definitely parts of Secret Headquarters that feel derivative. Take the Guard, for example. It’s hard not to look at his armor and immediately think of Iron Man but with the serial numbers filed off. And I can’t help but feel that Wilson and Pena were cast due to their tenure in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even if Wilson’s trademark affability is one of the film’s stronger points. The best page that Joost and Schulman took from the Marvel playbook is to hire Christopher Yost, who previously wrote some of Marvel’s strongest animated series in The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and X-Men: Evolution, to help them write the screenplay. Yost manages to hit deep at the father/son relationship in the second half of the film, which results in some of the film’s best moments.

The true secret weapon of Secret Headquarters, however, is Scobell. Having previously stolen the show in The Adam Project, here he plays a more neurotic and self-doubting character in Charlie. And as the film progresses, Scobell peels back the layers of Charlie’s self-doubt to reveal -surprise, surprise – a kid who wants to have some kind of a connection with his father. Scobell’s been one of the most interesting actors to burst on the scene, and his performance in both The Adam Project and Secret Headquarters has me looking forward to his turn as Percy Jackson.

The rest of the cast is hit and miss. While Scobell shares a fair amount of chemistry with Tamada, Williams’ Berger is little more than comic relief. Case in point: he and his brother are the subjects of several hamburger-related puns surrounding their surnames. Pena’s usual comedic spark is absent; all he does is glare, grimace, and crack jokes that are too lame to even be referred to as “dad” or “uncle jokes.” The most interesting character in the film is Jesse Williams, who plays a morally conflicted soldier of fortune; it’s through him that some of the more interesting story points are reflected and I’d have loved to see more of his work in the final project.

Both Joost and Schulman are no strangers to the superhero genre, having directed the Netflix vehicle Project Power. Like Project Power, Secret Headquarters doesn’t miss a chance to show off its impressive budget – particularly in the Guard’s weaponry which includes jetpacks, a jacket that can generate force fields, and a bracelet that hurls kinetic projectiles. They use the cast’s age and the set-up to stage some genuinely inventive sequences, including a baseball game that features the mother of all pitches. And in one of the more refreshing scenes, both Wilson and Pena are shown to get winded during a fight in their respective suits of armor, as it’s clear that neither of them has the rippling physique of a Hemsworth.

Secret Headquarters is firmly targeted toward younger viewers, but that’s nothing to be ashamed of as it’s a solid intro to the superhero genre. It also marks another great entry in Paramount+’s library of original films following Honor Society. If you enjoy Sky High or We Can Be Heroes, this film will be right up your alley.

Secret Headquarters will be available to stream on Paramount+ on August 12, 2022.