Harry's Movie Review

FUBAR opens with a high-concept hook: a father and daughter both work for the CIA without knowing it. You could see this setup getting suffocated by cute family moments or heavy-handed sentiment. Instead, the show trusts the premise to carry the weight. It does. Arnold Schwarzenegger gets a role that actually lets him do something, and that alone makes this worth your time.

Schwarzenegger doesn't coast here. He's been in plenty of things where he just shows up and the role bends itself around his presence. This time he has to react to his daughter, and you feel the actual awkwardness of a parent trying to stay relevant. Monica Barbaro moves well through scenes without needing them to stop for her big moment. The chemistry between them feels earned through the writing, not imposed by the casting.

Nick Santora keeps things moving without letting the pacing get jittery. The action sequences do their job. The comedy doesn't undercut the stakes. If there's a limitation, it's that some of the supporting characters blend together, but that doesn't derail what the show is really trying to do, which is explore what happens when two people who keep secrets from each other have to stop keeping them.

What stuck with me was how the show doesn't treat the family dynamics as an obstacle to overcome. The spy stuff and the personal stuff are the same story. That's harder to pull off than it looks, and FUBAR manages it without getting maudlin about it.