Movie Review: Spy

Spy pastiches come in two varieties: those that mock the whole genre by throwing out any pretense of realism, like the TV series Get Smart; and those that try and take the genre seriously, but with a wink and a nod, like the old TV series I, Spy.  The latest Melissa McCarthy vehicle Spy starts off as the latter, then veers into the former.  It works very effectively at the start, creating a plausible scenario for a heavy-set woman to suddenly be thrust into the world of international espionage, but works less well when the plot starts getting silly (if indeed it even makes sense at all).

This is writer/director Paul Feig’s third film with Melissa McCarthy, and it is a classic director/actor combo like Billy Wilder and Walter Matthau or Federico Fellini and Marcello Mastroianni.  Feig somehow seems to be able to develop funny material for a plus-size woman with comic timing and a fearless approach to comedy, and he found the definitive muse with McCarthy.  More than that, she brings a certain dignity to her role even as the script puts her in increasingly absurd situations that threaten to turn her into a cartoon character.

The film’s most brilliant invention is the idea that James Bond is only able to be James Bond because of a desk-bound nerd feeding him intel from HQ into an earpiece.  McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, the “partner” of a spy named Bradley Fine (Jude Law), who appreciates her telling him when to duck as he’s about to be shot but at the same time has a patronizing attitude towards her.  When Fine is killed during an assignment and the entire spy network is compromised (apparently the CIA only employs five actual spies, which seems like a really small number), Cooper volunteers to go into the field to track the killer. The only real spy on her side is a rogue CIA operative named Ford (Jason Statham, mocking his hard-boiled persona with abandon), who goes "off the grid" to recover the stolen nuclear bomb Fine was seeking.

While Spy is funny, it is not close to rivaling Feig and McCarthy’s previous film, The Heat.  That film benefitted from McCarthy being able to play off another fine comedic actress in Sandra Bullock; here she mostly plays off bad guy Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne), who vacillates between playing Rayna as a ditz and a hard-ass.  She never finds a consistent tone, so the audience is unsure is she is supposed to be scary or comical.  Likewise Statham, who can do comedy (see The Italian Job) is so far over the top he is hard to accept as a competent, if not super-competent spy, but then at a key moment he fumbles worse than Maxwell Smart.  The inconsistencies make it hard to know whether we are supposed to laugh or be seriously concerned about the characters.

There is also a mildly inconsistent tone in the juxtaposition of attempted humor and graphic violence.  As with the movie Kick Ass and the more recent The Kingmen, I find the combination off-putting.  I don't mind graphic violence, but it takes me out of the comedy and makes it difficult to get back in.  I can't laugh at Melissa McCarthy if I think she's going to be shot in the head and brains will go flying out.

The plot spirals out of control until we are dealing with Bobby Canavale as . . . I honestly don’t know.  His character seemed to exist just to look good and serve as a plot point.  When the thing ends, well, it just ends with some deus ex machina exposition and the obligatory closing credit end tag.  And, by the way, I seriously doubt that the basement of the CIA is infested with bats and mice.  I’m just sayin’.

I’ll even criticize the utilization of Allison Janney as McCarthy’s humorless boss (the script actually has her say, “I have no sense of humor.”).  Janney can be an hysterically funny actress (she just won an Emmy for Mom and was really funny in the sort lived series Mr. Sunshine), so if you cast her in a comedy why burden her with being the straight woman?  Morena Baccarin, also an Emmy nominated actress, similarly shows up in a role that could have been handled by a far less talented actress.

If I were grading on a scale from 1 to 10 I’d give Spy about a 6.43.  It will deliver laughs, but it never builds the comedic stakes in a way that is either funny or plausible.  McCarthy delivers another excellent comedic performance, but she is surrounded by a collection of characters who are more funny in theory than in execution.  It is easier to recognize the one dimensional characters when there is a four dimensional one in the lead.