The Spy Who Dumped Me
Directed by Susanna Fogel Have you ever wanted to see one of James Bond’s conquests finally snap and then prove she’s the better spy? asked Anne Cohen in Refinery29 .com. That’s essentially what you get with Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon’s new action comedy, which gets rolling when Kunis’ Audrey, after being dumped by a suave operator who turns out to be CIA, talks her BFF into helping her complete a European mission he left undone. Though “McKinnon is the real star here,” she and Kunis have credible best-friend chemistry, and their jokes click, because they “feel like real things women would say to each other.” Surprisingly, “there are a dozen gun blasts for every laugh,” said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. Director Susanna Fogel “shows undeniable audacity” by packing in so much graphic violence, but the B-movie mayhem steps on the best comedy bits. “Energetic but spotty,” The Spy Who Dumped Me isn’t quite in the same league as Spy, Melissa McCarthy’s 2015 hit, said Robert Abele in TheWrap.com. But Kunis and McKinnon establish a convincing pushand-pull between their characters, and in the pair’s best moments together, “one sees appealing glimmers of a larger female-buddy-comedy world ready to be explored.”