Nothing kills me! I’m immune to 179 different types of poison. I know, because I ingested them all at once when I was deep undercover in an underground, poison-ingesting crime ring.
Spy
(2015)
Paul Feig
labours under the curse of Apatow. I don’t mean his penchant for orifice
humour, although that is abundant, but rather the illusion that the perfect
length for a comedy is no less than two hours. There’s a very funny movie
lurking within Spy, but its definitely
no more than 100 minutes long. Which is half an hour longer than the extended
cut.
One of the raft
of 2015 espionage movies, Spy brandishes
a better Bond theme than the actual Bond movie and, in Jude Law, someone
with a suavity Daniel Craig lacks (this was also true of the main players in Kingsman and Man from U.N.C.L.E, though). Feig is no action director, but then
neither is Sam Mendes especially, and as a writer he sticks to a fairly
unimaginative, well-explored genre-riffing template, albeit with a minor but
key twist; Melissa McCarthy’s desk jockey Susan Cooper, assistant to super
secret agent Bradley Fine (Law) is actually highly capable in her own right.
This is a
huge step up from the underwhelming and tired The Heat, although just as dependent on formula (the MacGuffin’s a
nuke) and comedy stars’ improv skills to keep ticking over. McCarthy’s
obligatory faux-sincere journey is one of developing self-respect and moving
beyond her infatuation with Fine; the attractive people, Fine (Law’s hairpiece is
firmly in place) and Rose Byrne’s Rayna Boyanov (and Morena Baccarin,
naturally) are entirely self-involved and/or obnoxious.
McCarthy is
on good vulgar form, particularly when she’s called upon to be antagonist (and most
especially so to Bjorn Gustafsson’s “reject
from the Sound of Music” Anton; “You
look like Abba took a shit and put a trenchcoat on it”). Miranda Hart,
playing Miranda Hart (well, Nancy B Artingstall, but same difference) is the
latest Brit comedy export who flounders in a sea of Hollywood. Byrne (“You look like an Ewok died on your head”)
plays it appropriately straight as Feig’s go-to bitch (see also Bridesmaids) and Allison Janney
perfectly pitches the hard-assed boss. Peter Serafinowicz gives either a good
performance as a horny British spy badly impersonating an Italian agent (“Was Pepé le Pew not available?”), or a terrible performance as an
Italian who can rehearse a good British spy. I’ll give him the benefit of the
doubt. 50 Cent isn’t funny, and can’t act, but I think we knew that.
There’s
much play on spy tropes, including gadgets taking the form of undesirable
personal healthcare items such as anti-fungal spray and stool softener. There’s
also copious gross-out (vomiting on grotesquely impaled corpses) and inessential
unrated cut envelope-pushing (erect penises are so in at the moment).
Stealing
the show, though, is the Stat as supremely incompetent and ignorant agent Rick
Ford. Unrepentantly coarse (“Twot means something
completely different in England”), even under threat of reprimand from the
HR Department, Rick is entirely gullible (“I
go into the Face/Off machine and get a whole new face”) and a font of
endless tall tales about his exploits (“This
arm has been ripped off completely, and reattached with this fucking arm”,
he has Posed as Barack Obama; “In black
face?”), and boasts “Nothing kills
me! I’m immune to 179 different types of poison. I know, because I ingested
them all at once when I was deep undercover in an underground, poison-ingesting
crime ring”). The Stat doesn’t try to be funny, very wisely, he just winds
his hard action man act up to 11 and keeps on going.
Spy isn’t dull, and a good quotient of its gags
are pretty funny (although Feig’s idea of quality control appears to be to give
everything a pass), but It’s just too
damn long to hit a consistent stride. That may not matter with his next outing,
the femme-centric redux of Ghostbusters,
but it’s about time someone remembered that comedies should leave you wanting
more, rather than all tapped out.
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