Kit Harrington and Mark Wahlberg in The Family Plan 2Apple TV+
By
Gregory Nussen
Published 2 hours ago
Gregory Nussen is the Lead Film Critic for Screen Rant. They have previously written for Deadline Hollywood, Slant Magazine, Backstage, Salon, In Review Online, Vague Visages, Bright Lights Film Journal, The Servant, The Harbour Journal, Boing Boing Knock-LA & IfNotNow's Medium. They were the recipient of the 2022 New York Film Critics Circle Graduate Prize in Criticism, and are a proud member of GALECA, the Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics. They co-host the Great British Baking Podcast. Gregory also has a robust performance career - their most recent solo performance, QFWFQ, was nominated for five awards, winning Best Solo Theatre at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2025.
Sign in to your ScreenRant account
Summary
Generate a summary of this story
follow
Follow
followed
Followed
Like
Like
Thread
Log in
Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents:
Try something different:
Show me the facts
Explain it like I’m 5
Give me a lighthearted recap
The Family Plan at least had stakes you could get behind. In the first of the Apple + straight-to-streaming family action comedies, Dan (Mark Wahlberg) is hiding his previous identity as a high-level assassin. The big secret of The Family Plan 2is that Jessica (Michelle Monaghan) has a job offer in another state. The first film was almost universally panned by critics, but because it was such a massive hit for Apple + we now get spoon fed a sequel whose only improvement is the beauty of the Parisian cityscape, a production trip funded entirely by the success of the iPhone. Simon Cellan Jones' follow-up to the 2023 film is so dire and comically flat that it induces existential dread. It is an experience akin to watching a two-hour credit card commercial.
The Family Plan 2 is a Staid, Humorless Affair
After the events of The Family Plan, Dan, aka Sean McCaffery, has switched careers from used car sales to high-tech security consulting. The family seems to be living in moderate peace and quiet, with their biggest stress coming in the form of eldest daughter Nina (Zoe Colletti) refusing to fly home for Christmas during her semester abroad, in England. With the extreme overbearance of her father, its hard to blame her. Wahlberg's off-screen, cultivated persona as a Good Christian Family Man is exceedingly apparent in this series, in which the beefy actor uses nearly every line of dialogue to yell in anxiety about how much he cares for his children. Yes, thank you, we understand. It's exhausting.
David Coggeshall is back to write the sequel script, and the first act is nothing if not unnecessarily complicated, tying itself into knots trying to justify a family vacation to visit their daughter. It's difficult to say why they can't simply go, but whatever the case, Dan finds the perfect excuse in a business proposition from a bank in London that happens to contact his firm at the same time he frets about not being together as a whole family. This is a man we are told ad nauseam is a super spy, yet he also cannot smell a plot from a million miles away. Maybe the suburbs of Buffalo has made him soft.
Once in England, the family meets Nina's utterly jacked boyfriend, Omar (Reda Elazouar), who is perfectly sweet and lovely, and whom Dan immediately distrusts for no apparent reason. Without any other explanation, it seems fair to assume Dan is just racist, or else Coggeshall and Jones are, since Omar is only one of two persons of color in the entire film and the butt of every joke. The other person of color, Vikram (Sanjeev Bhaskar) is a mostly mute butler. The other person in the film with an accent, a Russian spy and former girlfriend of Dan's, draws "humor" from eccentrically singing about borscht. The humor is never more elevated than Monaghan drooling at her daughter's boyfriend's six-pack.
While Dan goes off to the bank to have a business meeting one night, Jessica privately practices her "I have a job offer in Ohio" speech like she's getting ready to cop to an affair. At the bank, Dan meets Aidan (Kit Harrington), the branch manager, who tasks Dan with testing his security system by breaking into the vault. Dan does so immediately, only for Aidan to — surprise! — turn out not to be the bank manager, but a criminal who is just using Dan's expertise. Dan reveals that he could tell Aidan was a fraud the second he met him, which, of course, begs the question of why he went along with helping a stranger rob a bank, but regardless, the family man now has the exceptional problem of being internationally wanted for robbery.
It turns out that Aidan is actually Dan's long-lost brother that their father (Ciarán Hinds) had kicked to the curb at a young age, and is now out for revenge. And Dan's plan to foil his brother's villainy is to entice him with family. As in, he actually sits Aidan down and tells him that if he stops doing bad stuff they can all be a family. That's the plan.
Suffice it to say that no one is acting normally in this film, and that, even though they are running from death and the law at any given moment, moving across borders with fake IDs and stolen money, there isn't a single second of legitimate urgency. In between escapes, there is obnoxiously repetitious dialogue about the importance of "sticking together" and how family is the "most important thing." Nina does call out her father for twice now subjecting his kids to certain death, upending their entire lives, and gaslighting them into believing he's just an innocent, dopey dude, but after a scene of shaming they all kind of just shrug their shoulders and move on.
The film is woeful from top to bottom. There are so many moments that feel like stragglers of a first draft, including a band of five assassins that Aidan hires to take out Dan, and whom are never seen nor heard from again. Except for the one female assassin, who gets to fight Jessica, because, of course, because women can only fight women, or something. Even Kevin Matley's score is absurdly generic, which sounds like it was made in a vacuum irrespective of the film's action. At two hours long, the film feels closer to ten. If there is a third Family Plan, hopefully they actually have a plan besides pumping something out so non-distinctive.
The Family Plan 2 streams on Apple + on November 21st.
1/10
The Family Plan 2
Like Follow Followed PG-13 Action Comedy Release Date November 21, 2025 Runtime 106 Minutes Director Simon Cellan Jones Writers David Coggeshall Producers John G. Scotti, Mark Wahlberg, Stephen Levinson, Dana Goldberg, David Ellison, Don GrangerCast
See All-
Mark Wahlberg
Dan Morgan
-
Michelle Monaghan
Jessica Morgan
-
Movies
-
The Family Plan 2
We want to hear from you! Share your opinions in the thread below and remember to keep it respectful.
Be the first to post Images Attachment(s) Please respect our community guidelines. No links, inappropriate language, or spam.Your comment has not been saved
Send confirmation emailThis thread is open for discussion.
Be the first to post your thoughts.
- Terms
- Privacy
- Feedback
1 day ago
Harry Potter Report Confirms JK Rowling's Filming Visit For HBO Reboot
1 day ago
All American Season 8 Gets Shocking Release Update At The CW
1 day ago
Virgin River's Perfect Replacement Series Is Officially Returning To TV In Just 2 Months
1 day ago
Box Office Predictions: Wicked: For Good Will Bring Theaters Back to Life With a 2025-Best Debut
More from our brands
Movies To Watch If You Like 365 Days
The 10 Funniest Movies of All Time, Ranked
John and the Hole's Weird & Chilling Ending, Explained
50 Best New TV Shows to Stream Right Now
Jason Isaacs Is Ready to Psychoanalyze You
37 Shows on Netflix That Couples Can Binge-Watch Together
50 Best New Movies on Streaming to Watch Right Now
Trending Now
Jurassic World: Chaos Theory Season 4 Ending Explained: What Happens To The Nublar Six
Crunchyroll’s Top Anime of 2025 Finally Dodges the One Trope Fans Can’t Stand Anymore
Mark Wahlberg's New Heist Thriller Becomes Top 10 Most-Viewed Prime Video Movie Of All Time Despite Mixed Reviews
