SPY
DIRECTOR: Paul Feig
CAST: Melissa McCarthy, Jason Statham, Jude Law, Rose Byrne, Alison Janney, Miranda Hart, Bobby Cannavale, Morena Baccarin
CLASSIFICATION: 16 LV
RUNNING TIME: 120 minutes
RATING: ****
FUNNY, fun and fast-paced, this spy spoof movie is an excellent vehicle for Melissa McCarthy’s earthy humour, excellent comic timing and actual depth of character.
The gags abound, as does the silliness, every spy stereotype is mocked and thrown out the window and then it all comes together because we end up laughing with the main character, not at her.
With the help of writer/director Paul Feig, McCarthy injects a healthy dose of girlpower into the storyline and dialogue, with her character always questioning why she is treated in a specific way just because she happens to be a woman. Stereotypes are bashed alongside heads and your world will never be the same again after watching Susan Cooper in action.
McCarthy plays CIA analyst Susan Cooper who sits in a basement and plans successful missions for field partner Bradley Fine (Law be very fine indeed as the suave spy in a suit). She persuades boss Elaine Crocker (Janney) to let her go into the field when Fine is killed and all the regular field agents are outed.
The theory is her relatively unknown face will get her close to the baddie – in this case Byrne in a series of ever more ridiculous costumes as deadly arms dealer Rayna Boyanov.
While it turns out Cooper is totally capable in the field, other than in one scene McCarthy is never seen to do something that would be beyond her capacity – when she chases a suspect she does so in a way that makes sense. It is funny, but it is also within the realm of possibility, so even though this is a James Bond spoof (expect the exotic European casino, crazy gadgets and car chase scenes) the funny lies not so much in the ridiculousness of the situation, but in the interactions between the people.
McCarthy can be quite the scene stealer in other projects, but here she is the centre of attention and the supporting actors work that much harder to keep up. There is an improv element to dialogue with especially Statham being hilarious in his portrayal of the hard-bitten Brit who has the most impossible kinds of experiences to draw on. He serves as a surprisingly funny, poker-faced foil to Cooper’s no-nonsense approach.
Given an ever more bizarre series of cover identities, Cooper bemoans the absolute lack of sexiness to her characters when Bradley Fine would always get the fun ones and the script slyly gets in digs at assumptions around age and gender that are constantly reinforced by the Hollywood machine.
A running joke about a vermin infestation in the CIA’s basement is handled with dead-pan hilarity and the way she brushes off the sexual harassment from Italian spy Aldo (Peter Serfinowicz) shows up the sheer ridiculousness of his behaviour.
Whereas a movie like Bridesmaids showed us McCarthy could be funny, it was very much at the expense of her own character whom we were laughing at – here, though, by creating a character who is empowered when she is herself rather than relying on what others say about her, it becomes so much more than just a funny movie.
If you liked Kingsman: The Secret Service or The Heat, you will like this.