Spy | Little White Lies

Spy

04 Jun 2015 / Released: 05 Jun 2015

Words by Adam Woodward

Directed by Paul Feig

Starring Jason Statham, Melissa McCarthy, and Rose Byrne

A woman with curly blonde hair, wearing a grey jumper, looks surprised with her hands on her cheeks in an office setting.
A woman with curly blonde hair, wearing a grey jumper, looks surprised with her hands on her cheeks in an office setting.
4

Anticipation.

Even an espionage caper is an attractive prospect when Feig and McCarthy’s names are attached.

4

Enjoyment.

License to LOL.

4

In Retrospect.

Come for McCarthy, stay for Statham.

Melis­sa McCarthy and Paul Feig again prove they’re a match made in com­e­dy heav­en with this supe­ri­or spoof.

A major fac­tor in the suc­cess of writer/​director Paul Feig’s recent work – most notably 2011’s Brides­maids and 2013’s The Heat – has been the writer/director’s knack for assem­bling excep­tion­al com­ic ensem­bles. In Spy, Feig once again demon­strates his shrewd eye for mix­ing tal­ent, find­ing a (mis)match made in action-com­e­dy heav­en in reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tor Melis­sa McCarthy and res­i­dent British hard man Jason Statham.

The film charts the unlike­ly rise of Susan Coop­er (McCarthy), a bot­tom rung CIA ana­lyst who seizes an incred­i­ble career oppor­tu­ni­ty when her col­league and secret crush, a dash­ing dou­ble agent played by Jude Law, winds up MIA fol­low­ing a run in with Rose Byrne’s air-head­ed arms deal­er. With their top man out of ser­vice and the iden­ti­ties of numer­ous oth­er field agents com­pro­mised, Alli­son Janney’s Agency chief assigns Coop­er to reclaim a miss­ing nuke before it falls into the wrong hands.

Cooper’s per­fect­ly equipped to take on this dan­ger­ous high stakes mis­sion, but her lack of expe­ri­ence (read: tes­ti­cles) riles sea­soned agent Richard Ford (Statham). An almost car­toon­ish­ly misog­y­nis­tic throw­back whose inces­sant bick­er­ing and brag­ging becomes the butt of the film’s best run­ning gag, Ford is a red-blood­ed alpha who appears trapped in an end­less dick mea­sur­ing con­test with him­self. As the long-suf­fer­ing cowork­er who’s out to prove Ford wrong but not nec­es­sar­i­ly show him up (he’s more than capa­ble of doing that all by him­self), McCarthy wastes no time in deploy­ing her now cus­tom­ary scabrous shtick. As always, it’s hilarious.

This glo­be­trot­ting espi­onage romp doesn’t so much spoof the genre as glee­ful­ly sub­vert it at every turn. Yet for all that Feig employs phys­i­cal com­e­dy and some razor-sharp script­ing to jux­ta­pose McCarthy’s kick-ass abil­i­ty with her male coun­ter­parts’ bone­head­ed inad­e­qua­cy, Spy plays its gen­der pol­i­tics card with a rel­a­tive­ly straight face. You don’t have to look too hard for the film’s anti gen­der inequal­i­ty mes­sage, but cru­cial­ly it’s nev­er rammed down the audience’s throat.

Indeed, there are plen­ty of jokes that make light of some fair­ly broad gen­der stereo­types – a gad­get brief­ing scene pro­vides a slight­ly alarm­ing insight into the male psy­che via the pre­sumed con­tents of a woman’s hand­bag – but for the most part the laughs are more sit­u­a­tion­al­ly-based than obser­va­tion­al. It’s a for­mu­la that Feig would be wise to stick with for his upcom­ing Ghost­busters reboot, which will mark his fourth col­lab­o­ra­tion with McCarthy.

The plot itself is a fair­ly by-the-num­bers under­cov­er caper, but by the time Peter Ser­afi­now­icz rocks up as a faint­ly lech­er­ous Ital­ian lothario, you’ll just be glad to be in the com­pa­ny of such an embar­rass­ment of comedic rich­es. Off the back of Brides­maids, The Heat and now Spy, Hol­ly­wood can scarce­ly afford not to con­tin­ue sup­ply­ing McCarthy with a steady flow of star vehicles.

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