“… has a very forgettable quality to it.”

Yesterday I went to the dentist and endured a painful 40 minutes of getting a cavity filled, and I also watched Spy. I chose to watch Spy yesterday because then if it was terrible I could make a funny quip about how I enjoyed the dentist more than the movie. Unfortunately, I can’t make that joke because it would be untrue. Spy is about Melissa McCarthy who essentially plays an assistant to a James Bond type super spy. When a mission goes wrong, Melissa McCarthy then volunteers to go out into the field herself to gain intel that will save the world. Overall, Spy is nothing to write home about. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy, it just has a very forgettable quality to it. To start off I want to say that the movie wasn’t terrible. The reason that I put off watching it for so long was because it looked like just another stereotypical Melissa McCarthy movie with a bland storyline and equally as bland humour. I have to say that the movie surpassed these expectations, but not by much. First off, I want to talk about the comedy in this movie, because after all it is a comedy. I found that a lot of the jokes fell flat. There were many scenes that made me laugh out loud, but then there were large gaps in between those jokes that was filled with dialogue that barely kept me awake. The star of this movie, comedy wise, is hands down Jason Statham. Statham is introduced as a competent spy, but as the movie progresses he is revealed to be completely dim witted and you are left wondering how exactly he became a spy in the first place. Unfortunately, the rest of the comedy was very “safe” having a large reliance on the main character being fat. The portion of the movie that I thought was great was when McCarthy was undercover as a spy pretending to be a bodyguard. It was only then that her character stopped being the fat timid lady who sits behind a desk, and got to throw out some really fucking funny one liners. Unfortunately, other than that, the comedy was basic.

The next thing to discuss would be the structure of the movie. Spy is, at its core, a spy film. Even though it is a parody, it has to be comparable to spy films. Thats where the movie ultimately falls short. If the only element I was aware of from spy movies was that they are sometimes drawn out and boring, then this movie would have hit the nail on the head. But unfortunately, it is the most dumbed down version there can possibly be of a spy film. And the characters were all cookie cutter characters form spy movies. This is not so much a bad thing for parody films, but it would have been nice to get a little more than one character being different. At least the character that was different was pretty good, and not good as in “it was different from spy movies”, but good as in “it was different from Melissa McCarthy”. Yes, even though I said the movie relied on fat jokes, for the most part McCarthy played a competent character. This was a breath of fresh air from her usual “fail upward” schtick. Another portion of the movie was the action. This is one aspect that I will applaud the movie on. The action scenes, specifically the fight scenes, were absolutely beautifully choreographed and executed. Though I will add that there seems to be gratuitous slow motion in the film whenever anyone got punched. And unfortunately, the effects in this movie instead of accentuating the action, hinder it. The blood effects particularly, are absolutely abysmal. I’m not sure if while they were shooting, the director forgot to add “real” blood to the actors when needed, or if the actors refused to have any sort of blood on them, because it seems that any time there is blood in this movie it was very poorly digitally added.

Really there isn’t much more I can say about Spy. If you enjoy action comedy movies, then you will probably enjoy yourself while watching Spy, but don’t expect to remember it even a day later.

I give Spy a C