'Spies in Disguise'

The animated “Spies in Disguise” has one cute idea — what if an international super-spy could become a pigeon — and can’t quite find enough to do with that idea to fill a feature-length movie.

Meet Lance Sterling, a spy so cool he brings his own entrance music when he infiltrates a nest of criminals. So cool he gets an ovation when he returns to his agency’s secret headquarters under the reflecting pool by the Lincoln Memorial. So cool that he’s voiced by Will Smith.

Meet Walter Beckett. Walter is not cool. He’s an inventor working in the bowels of that same spy agency, working on non-lethal alternatives to the spies’ usual array of deadly gadgets. When he surprises Lance by putting a kitty glitter bomb in his arsenal — glitter releases endorphins that temporarily neutralize an opponent with cuteness — Walter (voiced by Tom Holland) gets fired.

When it turns out Lance’s latest mission went awry, and an Internal Affairs agent, Marcy Kappel (voiced by Rashida Jones), suspects Lance is a double agent who stole the murderous drone he was supposed to bring back to HQ. Lance needs to escape his own agency and disappear, so he suddenly needs Walter’s help. Walter’s solution is a serum that alters Lance’s DNA and turns him into a pigeon. 

Lance wants none of this, even though Walter tells him that pigeons are the perfect disguise, because they reside in every major city and no one pays attention to them. Certainly it comes in handy when Lance and Walter take Lance’s super-fancy yacht to Venice, to track down the mysterious villain (voiced by Ben Mendelsohn) who apparently has a device that project Lance’s face onto the villain’s head.

There are some good gags here, mostly from the banter between the irate Lance and the eager-to-please Walter. Directors Tony Quane and Nick Bruno, both veterans of Blue Sky Animation (working on “The Peanuts Movie” and the “Ice Age” franchise), know how to pace a movie and ramp up the animation pyrotechnics. But, ultimately, the pigeon jokes and the juxtaposition of feathers and espionage run their course, and “Spies in Disguise” becomes another unremarkable animated gag reel.

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‘Spies in Disguise’

★★1/2

Opens Wednesday, December 25, at theaters everywhere. Rated PG for action, violence and rude humor. Running time: 101 minutes.