I’ll let you in on a little secret: I have only seen the first Mission:Impossible film and I have only seen it once, close to 20 years ago. I liked it just fine and I like Tom Cruise for the most part, I just haven’t really had any interest in the movies. Even so, I can’t deny the cultural phenomenon that seems to be the most consistently-praised franchise currently active. So, while most people are probably going to sit down to watch Mission: Impossible – Fallout this weekend, I watched a terrible post-Y2K spy/hacker direct-to-video movie aimed towards tweens called Spy High.

This is the type of movie that kids might catch on a random Saturday afternoon when it gets played on HBO Family for some reason; that’d be the only reason to come across this film. That, and if you write articles about terrible movies. A bad movie is a bad movie, but it takes a special kind of evil bad movie that tries to fake me out with an almost-death of the most interesting character in the film, Rocky.

Spy High or Task Force 2001 starts off with an odd relationship between a high schooler, Andrew, whom I guess is supposed to be some sort of hacking genius, and Valerie, an older hot woman that works for a gaming company. They talk over what the 2001 fantasy version of what Skype is today, so I guess this movie predicted something. Anyway, I totally get why he’s into her, but she’s far too flirty to be talking to a possible minor. She’s testing a brand new video game that she’d like his opinion on, so she sends him the file to transfer overnight, so it’s probably like 100 MBs max. In order to boost the performance of the game, she also gives him access to a government server, which, based on my minimal knowledge of law, has to be illegal.

Andrew, along with his friends (especially Cat who is totally perfect for Andrew if he just opened his eyes and saw what was right in front of him OMG), hack a government satellite in literal seconds. But on the other side, Jessica, Andrew’s Skype date, uncovers an unsavory plot to use the game for a mind control experiment which would then be weaponized. Jessica gets some heat from her boss, so he hides her in middle management, but not before she sends out a panicked message to Andrew, leading him to believe that it’s up to him and his friends to stop the evil plot.

Helping out Andrew is John, a federal agent whom Valerie was working for. With John’s help, the teens train for, I guess, about a month, based on his alibi for them, which means that Valerie is essentially held prisoner while he gets the kids into shape. Once he does, the kids easily infiltrate the tech company’s headquarters with silly 2001 technology in order to try and rescue Valerie and stop the mind control plan.  The most important special agent on the team is Andrew’s dog, Rocky, who is just the bestest boy in the whole wide world. He’s able to rappel, sneak, and attack when need be, and without him, the plan would be in a world of shit. And this is the reason why this movie can go fuck itself.

There are very few instances in which a movie should kill a dog, or even pretend like the dog might die. And this movie tries to do the latter. Fuck you. This dog is the best thing in this movie and you didn’t earn the right to make me think you’re going to knock him off. Fuck off for pulling this shit.

 

OVERALL

Fuck this movie. It’s not funny, low budget, and they almost kill a dog. They don’t deserve your time. And they can’t even get there IMDB page correct. There’s another project called Task Force that bleeds into its cast and crew information and it almost made me believe that somehow, some way, there was a television series being developed based on this shit movie.