Spy

Sometimes, for whatever reason, you don’t like an actor. Maybe you haven’t liked a lot of the stuff they’ve been in before, maybe there’s been a poor performance from him or her you can’t get past or you just decide you don’t like them for a daft reason you can’t justify for any reason. I understand it as despite the critical love for her, I’ve never really liked Melissa McCarthy. While I liked her in Bridesmaids, films like Tammy and the awful show Mike and Molly have put me off her big time. So can her vehicle Spy make me like her?

Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy, Gilmore Girls) is a CIA analyst who provides information to field agent Bradley Fine (Jude Law, Sherlock Holmes) but she has begun to grow tired of being on the sidelines. So when Fine gets killed and the CIA’s field agents become known to Rayna (Rose Byrne, X-Men: First Class) who has a nuke in her possession, Susan volunteers to become a spy to try and stop Rayna from selling that nuke to a true villain.

Now, the reason I don’t like McCarthy very much is that she inspires very lazy writing. Because she is a larger lady, writers seem to think that if they just make her fall over a lot, we’ll laugh our arses off. So when McCarthy does her fifth pratfall in a particularly awful episode of Mike and Molly, I just start hating everything and never want to see McCarthy again. I realise that this isn’t McCarthy’s fault, but these sort of jokes seem to follow her around. Luckily, most of the jokes in Spy are thanks to the good script, which allows McCarthy to actually be funny, which she can actually be. I now like her thanks to this film because she shows she can deliver a one liner and do things other than slapstick. There are the bad fall jokes present, the much trailed scene of a scooter tipping over is as bad as it was there, but it is much limited here.

But the funniest person in this film is certainly not McCarthy. That honour goes to Jason Statham (The Transporter) as field agent Rick Ford. I’m pretty sure the script writer just took all those old Chuck Norris jokes and put them on steroids and gave them to Statham to go nuts with, and go nuts he does. Every line he delivers is an absolute gem and honestly, I wish the film had more of him it. He’s simply a joy to watch and even though really he is a bit of a dickhead to the main character, you allow it because brings so much more fun to the film.

Now as we all know, James Bond parodies are plentiful. The Austin Powers films did it well, Johnny English not so well and even films aiming to start a franchise like Kingsman: The Secret Service makes sure the audience knows where its roots lie. And Spy isn’t entirely sure whether or not it wants to parody Bond or not, which is a small issue. The film, after an opening action stunt, goes into an animated title sequence with a power ballad, much like the Bond films do, which feels tired. We’ve seen that parody a million times before and when the film goes down that route, like in a scene with the CIA’s Q-style person which is remarkably similar to something from the Alex Rider books, it isn’t as funny. When it goes down it’s own path though, it’s hilarious. I love a scene when Susan is trying to stop Ford from being blown up, you have to watch it, only to wander into an open air concert by some old Eurovision people. It’s funny, unique and very entertaining.

What I most appreciate about the film is the plot. Oh, on the surface it’s nothing special, just a bog standard spy film plot. But it’s executed very well and there is a lot of twists in there that are unpredictable yet make sense. Heck, some of these twists would be a great in a proper spy film, never mind a comedy. This plot makes the comedy work better because seeing some of the ridiculous characters and accents, Rose Byrne’s Eastern European accent is the right sort of bad, in a real spy situation generates great humour. It’s that old comedy adage of you get comedy from putting extraordinary characters in ordinary situations or ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, it’s  standard thing but when it is done well you have to applaud.

Now, some of the jokes do fall flat. As I’ve said before, the ones relying on McCarthy doing some slapstick where she falls over, are poor and need retiring now. Some other jokes fall flat simply because they aren’t funny. Now the quick one liners which don’t work are fine as the film simply moves on without a fuss, but when it’s the long back and forths that flop, they flop big time. The majority of the jokes do work, but that sort of makes the bad ones stick out like a sore thumb.

I have to thank Spy for making me like Melissa McCarthy after years of writing off all of her stuff and dreading the new Ghostbusters film because of her inclusion. But because Spy has a great script which allows McCarthy to do more than just rubbish slapstick, it makes her funny and the rest of the cast hilarious. In a year where we have been given terrible comedies like Mortdecai which tried something very similar to this film, it’s nice to sit back and laugh at a film.

Best Moment: Yes, the former Eurovision act with the name I can’t spell’s open air concert. Loved it.

Worst Moment: When McCarthy did the awful slapstick that put me off her to begin with.

4/4