Spy

Paul Feig’s Spy is an action comedy set in the world of international espionage. Melissa McCarthy plays a CIA analyst named Susan Cooper who sits behind a computer in Washington guiding a dashing secret agent (Jude Law) through his dangerous missions. When an attempt to stop a terrorist organization from acquiring a suitcase nuke goes badly and the CIA needs a new field agent who is totally unknown to the terrorists, the short, rotund, dowdy Cooper volunteers for the job.  

From Mission Impossible’s Ethan Hunt to James Bond in the Daniel Craig era, most movie spies these days have a little voice in their hidden earpiece telling them where to go and who’s waiting for them around the next corner with a gun. Centering an adventure story on one of these anonymous voices, and having her venture out into more active duty, would be a terrific premise for a straightforward thriller or a high-concept comedy grounded in a dynamic persona (something in the mode of Beverly Hills Cop).  Either approach would have ample potential for breathing fresh life into a tired genre or for providing insightful commentary on the way women—especially heavyset women—are discounted and undervalued by society.  Unfortunately, all that the consistently disappointing Feig delivers is a generic, over-the-top send-up of the spy genre (as if we need another one), full of juvenile, obvious, one-note fat jokes and sight gags. At every turn in this picture, we find a squandered opportunity to capitalize on its central conceit.

What a waste of a great idea and of McCarthy’s substantial talents. The newly-minted movie star has provided several hints in her recent films as to what a terrific comic actress she could be if she’s ever freed from type of female Chris Farley roles she and everyone else seem to think are the only thing she should play. I’m astounded by the fawning praise this picture (like Feig’s equally desperate-for -laughs Bridesmaids) garnered from critics and audiences. Of course, funny is funny, and if this material works for you, who am I to say you’re wrong? But even when seeing the film in its opening week (as I did) with a big crowd primed to enjoy themselves, the picture’s lack of invention, shallow subtext, and dull narrative is inescapable.  At least Feig and McCarthy’s previous collaboration, the buddy comedy The Heat (2013) gave audiences dimensional (if broad) characters.  Spy, is just a big silly send up of cliché plotlines and generic stereotypes all played for the cheapest of laughs.

Feig’s cinematic style has a surface polish in the action sequences but the way he shoots the extensive (and redundant) dialogue scenes is woefully inept. He covers his actors in the Judd Apatow style of shooting a mountain of footage (much of it clearly improvised as the cameras role) and then slapping it together in the editing room with no sense of timing or rhythm to the cutting. McCarthy’s first scene with her CIA boss (Allison Janney in a role that utilizes none of her unique talents) is so incompetently shot and edited it should be screened in film schools as an example of what to avoid when you graduate from making disposable YouTube videos to directing legit features.

Spy does contain a few entertaining supporting performances. British sketch and sitcom star Miranda Hart (slimmed down in her American movie début but still using her extreme height for comedic effect) gets a couple decent moments—though Fieg just scratches the surface of the gifted comedian’s talents.  Jude Law and the usually stiff Jason Statham send up their screen identities with aplomb. But the villains, played by Bobby Cannavale and Rose Byrne, are too silly and insubstantial to keep the film’s third act from disintegrating into a soft, dull, mess.  I’m still waiting for a great Melissa McCarthy movie but I sincerely doubt it will come from Paul Feig.