Just when I thought I was safe from voice roles altogether, here comes Nicholas Cage’s third fully animated feature film, G-Force (2009) which is all about a team of spies who also happen to be guinea pigs.

I’m not one to judge a person (ahem) small rodent mammal purely by their looks alone, but I did judge this film by its main characters. I judged it as totally absurd, and I stand by that assertion. 

I’m 50 years old after all. My kids are in their 20s. So, I am at the cranky point in later-mid life where I tend to avoid movies where furry overgrown mice are seen rocketing down the street in weaponized hamster balls, making fart jokes and confounding the FBI agents who are so flabbergasted (“they’re just guinea pigs”) they pulverize their SUVs leaving mangled metal and street signs in their wake.

But Nicolas Cage is in it, so…you know…the WATC(H). 

The World According to Speckles [spoilers ahead, if that’s even possible]

I honestly don’t know what to say about this film. It’s made for a kid’s sensibility. I am not the target audience.  G-force is live action mixed with CGI-animated guinea pigs, who can talk and operate weaponry and skitter about with great dexterity. These types of films have become all too common these days, but in 2009 they were “new-ish” and likely pulling in big $$$$ at the box office. (3-D was all the rage back in those days, Netflix streaming did NOT exist. Primitive)

I’ll summarize the movie plot in one long compound sentence:The guinea pigs of G-force uncover a global plot by a group called Saber using appliances as killer robots; each G-force member must discover if “they really are special enough” to overcome their self-doubt, band together as a team, and dispel the villainous threat of total human annihilation: they do.

I could tell you all about the individual guinea pigs of G-force and their particular skills / gifts (GPs voiced by Sam Rockwell, Tracy Jordan, and Penelope Cruz) but let’s skip all that, and talk only about the Mole (Speckles) played by the enigmatic Nicolas Cage. Speckles is the computer hacker tech-head for G-force who helps the team infiltrate Saber strongholds, evade security systems, and peek around corners. Like most technical wizards, he does his work underground (as moles are apt to do) and well out of the line of fire, but his skills are invaluable for the operatives who must access the data “on the ground” and extract the information. 

Speckles, true moliest of moles, sports big thick glasses, likes to snack on worms, and talks mostly through his nose. If you didn’t know it was Nicolas Cage playing Speckles, you might not realize who the voice-over artist even was by the sound of his voice alone. (But for those of us who watched Peggy Sue Got Married, we know that Cage has been working on this nasal fry for well over two decades by this point.)

If you’re thinking this sounds like low-budget Disney fodder with B-list actors, you’re wrong. Zach Galifianakas plays the human counterpart Ben, who acts as ward to the G-force GPs. He’s a sensitive scientist and FBI operative (evidently) who is primarily responsible for unlocking the power of the rodents to uncover the terrorist plot. 

Playing the hard-nosed FBI skeptic, Kip Killian, is Will Arnett (no comedic slouch in his own right.) Kip is responsible for shutting down the rogue rodent team when he discovers that Ben has been using them on risky missions without the government’s blessing. In addition to these two well-known actors, Steve Buscemi shows up (again) as Bucky (a greedy little hamster) and Jon Favreau plays Darwin’s lost brother Hurley (a fat Guinea Pig who has lived his whole life in a pet shop). 

Other Thoughts on G-Force  

I don’t remember watching this movie when it came out in 2009, but I do remember that was the year that my daughters wanted a pet and we ended up somehow with guinea pigs that lived on our porch outside our small apartment.

I have allergies so even this was an experiment to appease the children, and it dramatically failed. Why guinea pigs you ask? Well, I’m wondering now if GPs were sitting on the collective consciousness of most elementary school kids at this time because of this movie directed at kids. We went along with their interest, but we had to get rid of the guinea pigs eventually because of “daddy’s allergies” (which was true, but also sad for them). Coincidentally, this was also the year of the swine flu. I remember because both my daughter and my wife got the swine flu that year and I was trying to take care of both of them at the same time which was not very easy to do. Sarah, maybe in first grade, was struggling to breathe so we opened the sliding door to our porch to get some fresh air into her lungs. Christa came down the hall to check on us both and promptly passed out. It was complicated.

Thankfully, we all survived the swine flu and the guinea pigs. As far as I know the rodents were not involved nor did they pull off any heroics on my behalf. Go figure.

The Mole (Spoilers)

The best part (and there aren’t many) about G-Force is that Nicolas Cage plays the Mole who is the mole on G-Force–the traitorous mastermind behind Saber and the appliance super robot attack on the world. I somehow didn’t clue into this fact early on (it was written on the wall), even though Speckles was literally absent (and presumed dead) for a good three-quarters of the movie.

He was the smartest and most talented and most likely “animal” to achieve the technical feat required for Saber robot killing, but I didn’t see it. Backstory: evidently Speckles had an axe to grind with humanity. His mole family had been exterminated by humans, and he made a promise to his dying father (mole) that he would one day avenge his family if given the opportunity. 

Nice.

So, the nasally Mole planned to kill every human on the planet using a satellite powered-applianced morphed into a Tranformer-style giant mole robot. Think Mecha-Godzilla. But Speckles realizes, almost too late, that he is also going to sacrifice more than the humans with this plot–and he is reminded by Darwin (Sam Rockwell GP) that he has a family (the G-Force family) that he will be betraying in his effort to avenge his mole family. Speckles grows a conscience, repents and helps the G-Force take down the robot. After it’s all said and done, he has to serve out a negotiated sentence, but is promised he may some day return to G-Force once he’s reprogrammed all the bad espresso machines. Or some nonsense of this variety.

Final thoughts

Can’t believe I wrote this much about this film. There it is.

First for Nicolas Cage as Speckles

• Playing a mole who is also a mole
• Eating a worm (as opposed to a cockroach) (Vampire’s Kiss)
• Computer hacker
• Living underground

Recurrences

• Animated voiced role (Ant Bully, A Christmas Carol: The Movie)
• Nasal fry (Peggy Sue Got Married)

Quotable 

“I’m a mole. I’ve got a thing for worms.”

“Cage. Oh, no.” [Comment: this is the best double entendre I’ve seen in a movie.]

“I don’t do cages.”