REVIEW: ‘Matchbox: The Movie’ Crashes Into The IP Doldrums

Were you a Matchbox kid, or a Hot Wheels kid? That’s the question everybody’s been asking each other lately, right? Director Sam Hargrave and writer David Coggeshall’s Matchbox: The Movie from Skydance is no doubt one of the worst modern attempts at an IP cash grab yet. When you think about your toy cars, if you even do, which you probably don’t, you think about international nuclear crises and the small-town chemistry teachers who accidentally have to stop a CIA inside job, right?

Sure, playing with toys as a kid often involved making up stories that have absolutely nothing to do with the toys themselves. But if you’re making a movie about said toys, something about the premise should probably remind you about playing with them; not just what it was, maybe sort of supposedly like playing with them from a corporate testing group’s perspective.

None of the nostalgia plays work in Matchbox.

Matchbox most certainly does not evoke its titular toys. In fact, if the movie had a different title and the characters didn’t mention Matchbox every 20 minutes, the movie could be about truly any other IP. Or not connected to one at all. No matter what, it would still be a terrible movie. Its one-liners are never funny, the action is mediocre, the stakes are ridiculous, and everything from the sets to the dialogue and the acting are completely flat.

Sean (John Cena) had a big crush on Aimee (Jessica Biel) growing up. Their friends Ted (Arturo Castro), Crosby (Sam Richardson), and Charmaine (Teyonah Parris) made up the Matchbox Gang, a group of middle schoolers inexplicably tied together by playing with Matchbox cars. And a helicopter. Sean’s mom died, and his dad gets a new job in Chicago, so they move, and nobody sees Sean again until he shows up 20 years later at Aimee’s uncle’s funeral, just after a nuclear bomb goes missing on Sean’s watch as a CIA agent.

The opening is ridiculously sentimental, trying to create nostalgia more for a time in your life than the toy the movie is tangentially about. But middle school is a terrible time to be nostalgic for, and not a single character feels like they actually have any interest in each other beyond the script implying they do. None of the intro comes across as genuine.

There’s nothing fun about laypeople feigning being spies.

Then the movie becomes ridiculous. All five characters are kidnapped by the CIA after some deliriously bad exposition where the friends don’t believe the situation they’re in or that Sean is really a highly capable secret agent, even though they were just joking that he probably was one moment before being drugged and kidnapped. Action, more action, bad one-liners, blah, blah, blah.

Matchbox is a thoroughly formulaic movie; you can surmise the plot from here. Russians who you can trust. Vague Central European-looking settings standing in for who knows where in real life. Even the cars the characters sparsely drive in middling action sequences are dull to look at. You’ve seen one gigantic, black, brazenly Mercedes-branded 18-wheeler in an action movie, you’ve seen them all.

There is virtually nothing fun about watching laypeople feign being spies. The movie constantly has to devolve into either their ineptitude so the movie can attempt a joke, or Sean’s overbearing concern for their safety to create a semblance of emotion. Plus, the sudden turn from terror to glee as the vestigial characters get sucked into the final action isn’t just trite; it’s absurd. They’re killing strangers with their big new toys, and that’s supposed to be a cause for joy?

No amount of John Cena charm can make Matchbox: The Movie work.

The fact that the movie is laden with guns and explosives seems fairly incongruous with the Matchbox of it all, too. It’s not that kids don’t play pretend about these things, but do they really? Should they? It feels like the movie was written first and foremost as an adult action movie and as a piece of Matchbox IP second. It makes little sense and further proves how much of a drain the era of corporate-produced streaming slop is on the entertainment industry.

No amount of John Cena charm can make Matchbox (2026) work. It’s rotten from the start with a dull and tired premise, and it putters out minutes in when the jokes fail and the action has more gunplay than car stunts. If Matchbox: The Movie is supposed to be a movie that reminds you how the ramps these toy car companies sold only worked half the time, then maybe it’s successful on that front. Otherwise, it’s a complete crash into the IP doldrums.

Matchbox: The Movie is streaming now exclusively on Apple TV.