I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE.. NOT TOO MANY LAUGHS

THERE was some ostentatious guffawing during the press screening of My Spy — but none of it came from me.

In fairness, there are a few amusing lines, and a running gag referencing other movies builds to a conclusion worthy of a smile, but otherwise this feels curiously like an Eighties throwback — the kind of daft comedy that might once have paired Arnold Schwarzenegger with Macaulay Culkin. The engagingly wooden Dave Bautista plays JJ, a hugely strong but haplessly accident-prone CIA agent.

After a regrettable muck-up on field duty in the Ukraine, he is assigned a safer job in Chicago, surveilling Kate (Parisa Fitz-Henley), who unwittingly married into a

family master-criminals, of international and her nine-year-old daughter Sophie (Chloe Coleman).

When the precocious Sophie rumbles him and his kooky partner (Kristen Schaal), JJ befriends her and inevitably begins to fall for her fragrant mother.

Let’s just say there are no surprises in this amiable enough film, which isn’t nearly as rib-ticklingly hilarierson ous as at least one person thinks it is.