THE SPY NEXT DOOR (PG, 94 mins) **
Starring Jackie Chan, Amber Valletta, Madeline Carroll, Will Shadley, Alina Foley, Magnus Scheving, Katherine Boecher, Lucas Till, Billy Ray Cyrus, George Lopez

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Hong Kong legend Jackie Chan may be comfortably in his fifties, but he still manages to put many of the action genre’s young pretenders to shame with his acrobatics in The Spy Next Door.

Targeted at families, this high-tech comedy marries the martial arts prowess of the leading man with slapstick and cartoon violence.

It is the sort of hare-brained caper that elicits squeals of laughter from young audiences as Chan wields two frying pans, one in each hand, and proceeds to batter a pantomime henchman into unconsciousness.

Special agent Bob Ho (Chan) is loaned from China to the CIA, working alongside his handlers Glaze (Lopez) and Colton (Cyrus) to bring down criminal masterminds such as the nefarious Poldark (Scheving).

Pretending to be a pen importer, Bob has served his adopted country diligently, but he has now decided to hang up his gadgets to pursue a burgeoning romance with pretty neighbour, Gillian (Valletta).

Any thoughts of domestic bliss are short-lived because two of Gillian’s children, step-daughter Farren (Carroll) and bullied son Ian (Shadley), view Bob with disdain.

Only the youngest child, pink princess Nora (Foley), appears to recognise what a genuinely good guy Bob is.

When Gillian is called away from home, Bob agrees to babysit.

“I brought down dictators. How hard can three children be?” he tells Glaze and Colton naively.

The Spy Next Door is everything you’d expect from a Jackie Chan escapade that merrily appropriates elements from The Pacifier, Spy Kids and Kindergarten Cop.

Chan may need a little technical assistance nowadays to defy gravity, but he flings himself gamely into each stunt sequence, even battling two brutes with the youngest child clinging on to his leg.

A mole in the CIA operation is the most obvious candidate, and the final showdown ladles on the syrup for a feelgood resolution to all of the angst and friction between the generations.