Mini Review - Spy

I love me a spy comedy. Kingsman: The Secret Service might be one of my favourite movies that I reviewed last year. But there was one movie I said topped it and that was Spy

Released in 2015, the trailers for this movie did not fill me with hope, so I didn’t catch it at the cinema but I did eventually catch it on DVD, the movie was a decent success earning $235m on a $65m budget and has an 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But it’s been a while since the first time, does it still hold up? Here are my updated thoughts

Spy is the story of Susan Cooper (Melissa Macarthy), she’s single, big, awkward and works as technical support to an agent named Bradley Fine (Jude Law) from the CIA. When an attempt to uncover a nuclear bomb results in Fine being ‘killed’ by Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne) who then reveals that she knows all the 5 active CIA agents, it’s up to Cooper, her best friend Nancy (Miranda Hart), sexual lawsuit waiting to happen Aldo (Peter Serafinowicz) and rogue agent Rick Ford (Jason Statham) to track down Rayna and uncover the bomb before she sells it to terrorists.

When I saw the trailers for this movie, I was worried they’d make Susan an incompetent agent and have that be the main joke. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. Susan is very much a competent agent, she’s smart, adaptable, takes to some bullsh*t covers like a dove to water, saves the day on multiple occasions and for all looks to the contrary, she can fight.

But the movie doesn’t make her entirely without fault, she’s going into situations without much planning ahead and that often leads to missions going in unexpected directions and landing her in trouble. Oh and she vomits/faints at the first sight of gore. This is where the others come into the fray. Aldo may be the very definition of creepy but he seems to be good enough to undo a knot with his teeth. Nancy is Cooper’s confident and has her back the entire mission and Ford… well, his egotism often makes things worse if I’m honest, but it’s an interesting conflict

But enough about the characters, what’s really gonna sell this movie is the jokes and I’ve gotta be honest, on rewatching it really takes a while to find its grove with its comedy. I personally don’t care about the disguises or all the jokes taken at Cooper’s expense throughout the first ½ of the movie but around that point something happens, Cooper gets to take on an identity of her own invention and my god she’s delivering one-liners out so quickly you’ve barely finished laughing from the last one.

The show does subvert some of the classic spy tropes. A lot of the more extreme things, often done by Ford are played for laughs, there’s no way he could’ve done those things. There are a couple of occasions where Cooper headbutts someone and ends up hurting herself in the process. Also, she attempts to hot-wire an old car before spotting a brand-new BMW (In some not very subtle product placement) for her to drive. It also subverts expectation by having the lead spy be not only a woman but a large woman and for her to be a perfectly competent agent.

For what it’s worth, I like Rayna as a villain, she’s stuck up, spoiled, rude, intolerant, clever, but in way over her head with everything that’s happening around her, but very much not wanting to show that. She’s a relatively complex villain, and it’s good she gets the spotlight since none of the other villains match up to her in terms of being compelling.

If there’s one thing that makes me a little uncomfortable with recommending this over Kingsman is all the sex jokes. Maybe it’s my asexuality speaking but I do feel uncomfortable with some of the jokes they pedal, particularly the final joke which I won’t spoil but it’s very uncomfortable to watch, especially given events of the past year. There’s thankfully no cum jokes so thank heaven for that mercy.

Spy is a well-acted and well-written spy comedy that may take a while to hit comedy gold, once it does, it hits it repeatedly. The action is fun, the characters are all somewhat likeable and it has one of the more compelling villains in these movies. But it’s more sexually oriented humour can be a little off-putting and perhaps I was a little quick to say it was better than Kingsman.

Rating 72/10