McKinnon channels her inner spy in uneven ‘Spy’

From the get-go, “The Spy Who Dumped Me,” a Kate McKinnon-Mila Kunis buddy spy comedy, has two things going for it.

First, female spies are clearly in vogue, if you’ve been reading the news — or if you prefer your spies to be fictional, may we recommend Keri Russell’s recently departed Elizabeth Jennings on “The Americans”?

More importantly, the film has McKinnon, whose comedic brilliance on “Saturday Night Live” has yet to find the perfect bigscreen vehicle. It will, one day, but this movie isn’t it. Still, her presence gives the film — an often entertaining but chaotically uneven experience — its energy and spark.

The main problem with “The Spy Who Dumped Me “is its strange dissonance of tone. There’s nothing wrong with trying to be a hard-knuckle action film and a goofy comedy all at once. But here, that effort results in moments of occasionally stunning violence that simply don’t mesh with the light-hearted vibe the filmmakers seek elsewhere.

Talented director Susanna Fogel (who co-wrote the script with David Iserson) clearly feels that a female action comedy doesn’t need to be short on the action, and that’s totally true. But gender issues aside, there’s action and there’s serious violence. When an appealingly kooky character gets shot in the head during a hilarious The Spy Who Dumped Me Rated: R “for violence, language throughout, some crude sexual material and graphic nudity” Running time: 116 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four. car chase, it suddenly doesn’t feel so hilarious. Likewise when someone drowns in a pot of fondue, or gets impaled on a blade. Granted, such a balance is always tough to strike.

We begin with Justin Theroux as Drew, the spy in the title, tangling with a bunch of bad guys in Lithuania, racing around on a motorcycle, leaping out of a building,

HOPPER STONE — LIONSGATE VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS This image released by Lionsgate shows Kate McKinnon, right, and Mila Kunis in a scene from “The Spy Who Dumped Me.”