Wednesday, 5 September 2018

The Spy who dumped me

The main pleasure of this film is seeing Mila Kunis and KAte McKinnon play off each other in various spy scenarios that get increasingly ludicrous as the plot continues. As an action comedy, this hits the action buttons pretty well, but the comedy is strangely mostly confined to the two leads - nobody else really gets a chance to get a joke in (though there is some sly mocking of spy movie cliches, from the henchwoman who's both a part-time model and a former gymnast, explaining her ludicrous outfits AND her acrobatic fighting style). And the jokes are pretty good - Kunis as the slightly straighter role of she-who-was-dumped and McKinnon as the friend who's tagged along for the ride but is prepared to go to extreme lengths to help out.

In some ways this is a revisit of some of the territory of Melissa McCarthy's "Spy" from a few years ago, having an unlikely hero succeed against ridiculous odds, although that one shared the comedy around far more. It's quite prepared to go to quite grisly places in both the action and the humour, but as long as things like taste aren't blocking you, you should have a reasonably good time, although literally the only other supporting cast member who has any moments of entertainment at all is Gillian Anderson in British-boss mode, and there are some late choices to drag along one particularly dull character that doesn't serve the film particularly well. Perfectly functional light relief.

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