Spy (2015) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / June 15, 2015

Anyone familiar with Melissa McCarthy will by default be familiar with Bridesmaids, the film that made her famous. For good reason too, she’s easily the best part of that movie. So, now that she’s the new comedienne of today, it was only a matter of time before she would capitalize on that success. Enter Spy, a film that’s the next in a very long line of spy movie parodies, that’s occasionally funny but marred by its plot.

McCarthy plays Susan Cooper, 007’s assistant so to speak. In CIA headquarters, she sits at her desk, utilizing her intel to advise the agents out in the field. Needless to say, she’s terrific at her job of advising Jude Law—eh, agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law), but she feels her life lacks excitement. Conveniently, director/writer Paul Feig has just the thing in mind: when an agent’s killed in the field, she takes the job of getting close to the target and gathering information. Though she has zero experience, her, shall we say, ‘unnoticeable’ appearance makes her perfect to effortlessly into her surroundings. Agent Rick Ford (Jason Statham) finds the idea completely ridiculous (because it is) and resigns, but has no intention of letting Susan screw up the assignment and goes undercover to help out, though, as it turns out, he is the one who could actually use help.

You’ll notice I said little to nothing about the baddies, because that would require me to get into specifics regarding the plot. It’s not that I care about spoilers, it’s just that, well, who cares about plot in a spy movie parody? There’s bad guys, conspiracies, backstabbing, money laundering, you get the picture. No one’s seeing Spy for its complex plot, but for the jokes and the parodies. Director/writer Feig, unfortunately, spends an awful lot of time on said plot and all its intricacies. Entire scenes are spent explaining how all the baddies tie together, the scheming, etc., hence the two hour runtime. It breaks the momentum and the whole thing grinds to a halt. What’s worse is that, in the end, all this explaining doesn’t build up to anything funny, so you’re left with that awkward feeling the film’s trying too hard to take itself seriously, to render its central story plausible, while it should be precisely the opposite: a comedy, especially a parody, should always be in on the joke.

Fortunately, the comedy is pretty good, if a bit PG-13-ish. Some of the jokes fall flat, while others, usually those involving McCarthy and Statham are pretty funny. Speaking of Statham, I don’t know if it’s a good career move to already be parodying himself as an action star, but he does a splendid job. His character’s convinced of his skillfulness, yet spends the entire film needing rescue. He’s always boasting about all the insane stunts he’s pulled and terrible things he’s experienced (apparently, his lover was tossed out of a plane and was then hit by another plane), and at the end of the day, he’s still convinced he solved the case pretty much singlehandedly. Good stuff.

In the end, Spy is pretty standard comedy fair. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel nor are its parodies of the spy genre really original, but it does enough things right to warrant a recommendation. As modern comedies go, there’s way worse things to watch than McCarthy and Statham arguing.