Film Review: SPYxFAMILY Code: White
By Shantleen Kaur Dhanoa
While the first half of this movie plays out like a typical episode of the anime it spun off from, the second half manages to dial everything that made the show great... UP TO ELEVEN!!
The animators took every opportunity to flex their budget, bringing beautifully expressive animation to the detailed backgrounds, fluid character movements, and expressive character faces that rival Disney Renaissance movies. We also get realistic character lighting, smooth black outlines to the characters (who have great designs done in a caricature style), and great 2D digitally animated water and fire effects. The skilful combination of 2D and 3D animation means there is no clash between the two styles! And on top of all this, the jokes are hilarious!
One of the funniest, if not weirdest, moments in the movie is when the villains try to force Anya to poop out a microfilm she has accidentally swallowed while eating a chocolate the microfilm was hidden in. Anya fantasizes about meeting the "Toilet God" who looks suspiciously similar to both the Eden College Headmaster (Principal) and Master Roshi from Dragon Ball (heck, he even sounds like Master Roshi!). The prominence of toilet humour is a departure from the series and includes imagery of peeing statues, poops, and a giant toilet bowl which Anya gets flushed down as part of her "toilet quest" that's probably a blatant spoof of Dragon Ball—a manga and anime that's infamous for its gross-out jokes.
Watching the movie I was reminded of the infamous scene in The Day The Earth Blew Up (2024) in which Daffy Duck blows up his butt, twerks over loud hip-hop music, and shoves his butt at the camera, before the word "Cancelled" is flashed on screen! While watching the Loony Tunes film in the cinema, my friend found it so gross she turned her attention to her phone before I caught her and told her to put it away. The animation in both films manages to come off as beautiful, cutesy, gross, and hilariously disgusting, all at once! The difference is that The Day The Earth Blew Up there was only one gross-out scene while toilet humour is a major part of SPYxFAMILY.
It’s also worth mentioning that SPYxFAMILY Code: White is completely riddled with cliches, probably more so than the show due to it making its funny moments and violent slapstick the focus of this movie! Several of the jokes are used to advance the plot. This includes the scenes of Loid buying lipstick for a suspicious Yor (one of the villains' obsessed with fortune telling), Anya trying to hold in her poop to avoid getting killed and escaping to a toilet (similar to Daffy trying to escape from his kidnappers in Golden Yeggs (1950)), the emphasis on Loid and Yor being immune to both realistic and cartoon physics and the battle between Yor and a Terminator-like cyborg... in a burning zeppelin (that ends with Yor using her lipstick to ignite the flames)!
Overall, this was a very fun, almost braindead, Christmas-ish movie. I highly recommend it to anime, spy movie, and slapstick cartoon fans—especially to SPYxFAMILY fans—due to its faithful callbacks to the anime and wonderful characters.
10/10
(Not as good as The Day The Earth Blew Up which for me is an 11/10, but still a great movie!)