No sooner has Vin Diesel made a dent in the action market than he's sending himself up as a hardman-turned-nanny, Arnie-style. But while Schwarzenegger managed to raise laughs contradicting his macho persona in films like Kindergarten Cop, xXx star Diesel shows little aptitude for comedy in this family caper. He's given no assistance by the poorly-paced script, which moves from a laborious set-up to a baptism of fire in which Wolfe's greatest challenges involve changing nappies and grounding not-so-errant teenagers. That there's little sense of threat to the children's lives makes his presence seem even more contrived.
As if in search of a link to established family fare, the film makes several nods to The Sound Of Music - at first relatively subtle (the children's mother is called Julie Plummer) and later painfully explicit, as a performance of the show is worked into the plot. But the comparisons only make it clearer that this attempted reverse of the story - naval man brings military discipline into relaxed, happy-go-lucky family - fails on both an emotional and comedic level.