The Family Plan 2 Review: Mark Walhberg returns for a humbug family Christmas action movie

Plot: Now that Dan’s assassin days are behind him, all he wants for Christmas is quality time with his kids. But when he learns his daughter has her own plans, he books a family trip to London—putting them all in the crosshairs of an unexpected enemy.

Review: Mark Wahlberg does not have many franchises to his name, but I never expected one of them to be The Family Plan. Two years ago, the first film debuted right around this same time of year as a family-friendly action movie starring Wahlberg as a former criminal turned suburban dad who gets pulled back into the world he left behind, shocking his wife and kids. The film was a decent time-waster but nothing memorable enough to warrant a sequel. The Family Plan 2 reunites the entire Morgan family for a globetrotting adventure during the Christmas season, abandoning the suburban pretext of the first film and diving straight into the action. While Mark Wahlberg does his best as the reluctant hero protecting his family, The Family Plan 2 is another mediocre direct-to-streaming offering that benefits from a solid budget but not much else.

Set two years after the first movie, The Family Plan 2 finds the Morgans celebrating Thanksgiving and preparing for Christmas when the news comes down that McCaffrey (Ciaran Hinds), the father of Dan Morgan (Mark Wahlberg), has died in prison. Dan is still coming to terms with the loss of his dad, but must also deal with building his new security company, contending with his son Kyle (Van Crosby) trying to pick a college, and convincing his daughter Nina (Zoe Colletti) to come home from her study abroad program in London to celebrate Christmas. There is also the fact that Jessica (Michelle Monaghan) has a job offer that would take the family away from their safe home of Buffalo, New York. To shake things up, Dan proposes a Christmas in London so they can spend it with Nina. That is when they meet her boyfriend, Omar (Reda Elazouar). The family also runs into trouble when Finn (Kit Harington) enters their lives.

Finn, who shares a past with Dan when he was known as Sean McCaffrey, wants revenge as he takes over the criminal empire started by Dan’s father. Stealing an item that will give him unlimited access to the McCaffrey fortune, Dan and his family must go on the run from the London authorities with Nina’s boyfriend along for the ride. As they avoid Finn’s henchmen along with the cops, the Morgans try to find the best way to enjoy Europe during the holidays. Dan is challenged by Nina’s adulthood and Kyle’s desire to break away from his father’s authority. Only the youngest kid, Max, seems to be enjoying the adventure, while everyone else begins infighting as they try to figure out how to take down Finn. As The Family Plan 2 chugs along from chase to fight to chase to fight, the action is more consistent than the first film, with just as much humour in the mix to keep it light despite the life-or-death stakes in the story.

The charm of the first movie lay in Dan’s efforts to keep his secrets from his family, but in the sequel, everyone already knows. Instead of misdirections, The Family Plan 2 homes in on the particular skills each family member has that can augment Dan’s already considerable prowess. The cutesy nature of seeing the average Morgans echo Dan’s skills is somewhat fun, but it wears thin after a while. It helps that Kit Harington’s Finn is a much more interesting villain than Ciaran Hinds’ limited role in the first movie, with Wahlberg and Harington getting some good verbal and physical sparring. This movie also gives Sidse Babbett Knudsen a fun role as Dan’s former flame, Svetlana, in my favorite role in the film. Reda Elazouar’s Omar never really feels relevant to the plot outside of providing Dan with someone other than Finn to scowl at, while also serving as an excuse to incorporate parkour into the narrative. All in all, the cast is as good as they were the first time around, but that is not enough to elevate this sequel.

Simon Cellan Jones marks his third film with Mark Wahlberg, having directed the original The Family Plan and the 2024 movie Arthur the King. Jones gets to leverage the sights of England and France to build the scope of the sequel, but there is only so much he can do with the generic pacing and plot of the story. Screenwriter David Coggeshall, who wrote the first movie, returns to expand on the same dynamic between the Morgans as we saw in the first movie. Yet, everyone is still dumbfounded when they learn another secret about Dan’s past. There are a couple of opportunities where The Family Plan 2 deviates from the formula of the first movie. Still, aside from this sequel leaning heavily into the Christmastime setting, this movie is almost a carbon copy of the first. That means you will likely see the twists coming from a mile away, but that does not detract from the fun they present in the moment.

As safe as it gets, The Family Plan 2 is a movie you can put on during the holidays to entertain family and friends without worrying about offending anyone. If you have any sense of humour, you will find moments to chuckle through the film, but the action leaves a lot to be desired. Mark Wahlberg is elevated by getting to play opposite Kit Harington, but other than that, The Family Plan 2 is a sequel we really didn’t need. Should this movie spawn another entry in the franchise, I would hope it would do something to really shake things up, but I never thought we would have gotten this sophomore effort after seeing the original. Safe but familiar, The Family Plan 2 is only worth checking out if you have nothing else to watch.

The Family Plan 2 premieres on November 21st on Apple TV.