Spy: A mildly amusing spy spoof

Spy perhaps does a little better than the other spy spoof movies, but never quite rises above being tepidly funny.

The enormous success of the James Bond franchise (and that of other spy/secret agent narratives in that genre) has spawned a succession of spy spoofs over a generation and more — from Austin Powers to Johnny English to Kingsman: The Secret Service and now, to Spy . The irony, however, is that while the Bond (and Jason Bourne) flicks themselves have become more thrilling and slick over the decades, the spoofs that mock them have been on a downward spiral, pandering to the lowest common denominator of audience taste.

Spy perhaps does a little better than the others, but never quite rises above being tepidly funny. This is a shame because it has a roll-call of prodigious talent, from Melissa McCarthy (as Susan Cooper, the calorifically endowed, frumpish undercover CIA operative; in short, everything that Bond is not!) to Jude Law (as the dandy Bond lookalike) to Jason Statham (as a bumbling Clouseau-esque secret agent with some of the most hilarious lines).

What works best for

Spy is that director Paul Feig has, for the most part, a Mel Brooks-ian sense of wacky fun. He is out to pack hilarity into virtually every frame and every line of the film; so the gags keep coming thick and fast. And in McCarthy, he has a comedienne in the Bette Midler mould, who can carry a film on her broad shoulders merely on the strength of her bubbliness. Her transformation from the Moneypenny-like flunkey in the vermin-infested basement of a CIA base station to a badass biatch in hot pursuit of an international group of traders in nuclear weapons is truly epic.

And Statham — oh my god, Statham! He plays Rick Ford, a CIA agent who resents Cooper’s intrusion into his turf, and stalks and disses her at every turn. But it is the seriousness with which he essays his outrageously funny character that is endearing in the extreme. It also helps that his lines appear to have been crafted by a scriptwriter who’s sniffed some psychotropic substance with other-worldly luminosity.

A couple of other minor characters too are middling funny. Peter Serafinowicz plays a libidinous secret agent with sparkle, and Rose Byrne is droll enough as the nuke weapons dealer.

But where

Spy falls flat is when it resorts to scatological excess and slapstick humour. McCarthy and Byrne are pointlessly potty-mouthed in their exchanges, beyond a point where it all ceases to be funny. And McCarthy’s vivacity would have been vastly embellished without the scene where she barfs — in technicolour! — all over a body. The plotline contrivances are also a little too tedious.

With just a bit of directorial restraint and some slick editing, Spy could have been a vastly better film. As it is though, it is merely a mildly amusing spy spoof.