Spy comes at the perfect time on the movie calendar. It hasn’t been a good time at the cinema in recent weeks, with either disasters or disappointments. Entourage was fun, but I’d say it was more of a 100-minute inside joke than actually funny.
A truly funny summer comedy is always welcome among all of the blockbusters that try to bowl you over with superhuman characters, visual effects and massive on-screen destruction. Last year’s 22 Jump Street, for example, was a much-needed release and palate cleanser. Perhaps not coincidentally, Spy was released on approximately the same weekend one year later.
It’s always a little bit weird to write a review for a movie after it finished No. 1 at the box office during the past weekend. What am I going to do, convince you to see it? But if you didn’t see Melissa McCarthy outshine Jason Statham and Jude Law in international espionage yet, you will be doing yourself a favor if you check it out and get some laughs. Frequent laughs, too. Not just a big pratfall or set piece meant to lurch you out of your chair. Paul Feig’s script constantly churns out lines that keep you giggling, even after the story has moved on to the next hilarious gag or one-liner.
The trailers and ads for Spy made it look like a goofball comedy built more on pratfalls like McCarthy tipping over on a scooter and easy jokes about her weight or how easy it is to make her look like a lonely cat lady. This movie is way better than the marketing would lead you to believe. Finishing No. 1 this past weekend might mean audiences figured that out. But word of mouth and longer legs at the box office would be a better sign that this movie could stick around as long as it deserves to.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that yet another collaboration between McCarthy and Feig was so entertaining. (Although I have to admit I haven’t seen The Heat. I will address that oversight soon.) I’m much more excited about the two working on a new Ghostbusters movie now than I was a week ago, before I didn’t know better. Now, I can’t wait to see what Feig and McCarthy (and a promising ensemble cast) do with that genre and material.
Parodies and commentaries on the spy genre have become quite a trend in Hollywood. The deadly serious tone that the Daniel Craig James Bond films and Jason Bourne series have taken seems to have spawned a response of movies that harken back to the fun, jet-setting and swashbuckling that we saw in the 70s and 80s. Back in February, we had Kingsman: The Secret Service (which hits video and on-demand this week) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. will continue the trend in August.
Spy fits in that dynamic somewhere. Certainly, the market for a spy comedy is better now than it likely would have been a few years ago. Law gets to parody the suave, debonair Roger Moore-era Bond. And Statham fills the role of the more bruising, brawling type of agent. But you can also imagine Feig simply pitching the idea that it would be funny for McCarthy to play the international spy game, traveling throughout Europe chasing megalomanical villains, driving fancy cars, wearing fabulous clothes and using cool gadgets that exist just outside the parameters of reality.
If Spy was two hours of using McCarthy for lazy sight gags involving a pudgy woman chasing targets on foot, attempting to slide over car hoods or getting into shootouts, while poking fun at how overweight people look frumpy and can’t dress glamorously, it would have been a torturous, unfunny, mean-spirited exercise. Thankfully, we don’t live in that world anymore, while Feig has too much respect for his muse (and comedy sense) to create a story like that, and McCarthy is enough of a star now that she doesn’t have to settle for demeaning herself for the sake of a joke.
Yes, McCarthy’s character is portrayed as a pushover and wallflower early in the story. She’s overlooked and marginalized, but that has more to do with her demeanor and sensibility than how she looks. Fortunately, Spy doesn’t try to insult our intelligence by putting Reese Witherspoon underneath glasses and a frumpy haircut, only to appear as a major babe once she gets a CIA-mandated makeover. This is McCarthy all the way, demonstrating all of her talents. When a handsy, horny Italian colleague (played by Peter Serafinowicz) constantly hits on her — sure, it’s funny — but not difficult to buy at all.
However, the pleasant revelation of this movie is Statham, who shows more of a gift for comedy than anything he’s ever done on screen would have you believe. As Rick Ford, international man of action whose overreliance on his physical abilities and penchant for the explosive resolution obscures the fact that, well, he’s kind of an idiot.
Statham is hilarious, and not just because his voice and accent punctuate the ridiculous dialogue Feig gives him wonderfully. He needs to pressure his agent to get him the comedy roles Mark Wahlberg turns down. Judging from his performance in Spy, we as a people have been deprived of funny Statham for far too long and he has more to give. Maybe he needs to work with Feig again.
But everyone in the cast shines here. Allison Janney does a great job as the agents’ director, bullying McCarthy (while enjoying giving her the worst, most embarrassing possible cover identities) and bossing around Statham, who she knows is a moron. And Miranda Hart (Call the Midwife) gets plenty of laughs as the best friend, bumbling sidekick role with a thing for muscley rappers that should guarantee her plenty of work in comedies for years to come. Maybe I could object slightly to Rose Byrne restricted to playing an uptight bitch, since Neighbors showed us she’s capable of so much more. But that’s what her villain role calls for.
We’ll be getting a few more comedies this summer — notably Ted 2, Trainwreck, and Vacation (we don’t have to count Pixels, do we?) — but I’ll have a hard time believing that any of those films will be better or funnier than Spy, especially in terms of storytelling scope. If one of them turn out to be, that’s our good fortune as moviegoers. Otherwise, it’s nice to have at least one summer comedy raise the bar and provide something as entertaining as what we’ve already been given with Avengers: Age of Ultron and Mad Max: Fury Road.
