An amiable, entry-level spy spoof
‘Spy spoof ” is every bit as much of a fail-safe formula by now as “spy drama”, to the point where future satirists may have to devise a spoof-ofthe-spoof, lampooning every recordscratch reversal, slapstick fight scene, USB flash drive as a default plot device, and so on. Nowhere near that sophisticated, The Spy Who Dumped Me is amiably entry-level, reheating many ingredients from Melissa Mccarthy’s Spy, which feels like last year’s offering (even though it was 2015’s). Where does the time fly in spy comedy land?
The Spy Who Dumped Me wants to get to a place where shambolic best friends Audrey (Mila Kunis) and Morgan (Kate Mckinnon) are accidentally outwitting terrorist conspiracies, abortively hijacking luxury cars because they can’t “drive stick”, and generally making a mess across Europe. The end is fun, but the means is awkward. For some reason, Kunis, who gives off the air of being a self-reliant badass, has been cast as a doormat who can’t stick up for herself, and needs her pushy pal to fight her corner. It’s peculiar, and the film relies on them having the improvisational clout to style it out.
When Audrey’s superspy boyfriend, the edgy Drew (Justin Theroux), dumps her by text, he fails to mention the all-important trophy (it contains a flash drive) that he’s left in her flat, and before long the pair are on flights to a pre-arranged rendezvous in a Viennese strudel café, screaming wildly, ducking bullets, and regretting the idea of being in this for the adventure.
The tight plotting of, say, Game Night is not this film’s strong suit – it just tumbles from one fine mess to the next, dragging in a 007 proxy who may or may not be a double agent (Outlander’s Sam Heughan, scrubbing up nicely), and scoring genre-awareness points with its female Russian assassin (Ivanna Sakhno) who is a tragic brainwashed gymnast devoted to her balance beam. The heroines try to talk her round but there’s nothing doing. Gillian Anderson, in danger of having “brisk, no-nonsense cameo” etched on her gravestone, gets yet another one as Heughan’s boss, stonewalling gamely as gags about Judi Dench are fired straight in her face.
Most of the film’s brighter ideas are courtesy of Mckinnon, who decides to go for broke and get her rocks off, bringing most conversations around to sex even when she claims to be squirming away from it, and vamping up the idea of herself as an awesome superspy with no idea what she’s doing.
With a female director, Susanna Fogel, guiding this material, the film sometimes feels like the first post#metoo mainstream comedy that is willing to make some fun of the movement, largely by making Mckinnon’s delusional goofball such a pill. Fooling nobody, her squawky idea of empowerment is delightfully deranged. If only Lotte Lenya’s Rosa Klebb were around to do battle with it. TR