Other Media Review

Movie Review: Spy

You didn’t think we were gonna review Entourage, did you?

I’ve loved Melissa McCarthy since her time on Gilmore Girls. She is a delightful commedienne with impeciable timing and a gift for physical comedy. She’s made some great choices in movies (Bridesmaids, The Heat) and some dubious choices that from the trailers, at least, looked like two hours of fat jokes and classist humor (Tammy, Identity Thief). I did have concerns about which category Spy would fall in, but the cast nudged me into plunking down my dollars.

Look, when you get McCarthy, Jude Law, Queen Allison Janney, Miranda Hart, Rose Byrne, and Jason Fucking Statham into the same movie, you give it a shot. Also it’s directed by Paul Fieg, who also directed Bridesmaids and The Heat, so… I shouldn’t have worried.

McCarthy, on a vespa, aiming a gun with a Don't fuck with me expression.

 

The set up is that Susan Cooper (McCarthy) is an analyst with the CIA, teamed up with Jude Law, a super suave agent who gets himself killed a little bit on the job while trying to find a missing nuke that’s in the hands of an arms dealer. Turns out, there’s a mole in the agency and has giving the arms dealer the names and faces of all the active agents in the division (there’s only five) (Including Law, who’s dead a little bit). So McCarthy, who has trained as an agent but ended up as an analyst/personal assistant to Law, goes out in the field to track down the arms dealer. Hilarity ensues.

The delicate concern about a slapstick comedy like this is that the jokes will go to low-hanging fruit like constant cracks about Melissa McCarthy’s weight. I’m happy to say that while some characters do make some such jokes, it’s not often, and it’s not treated as normal by the movie.

The great thing is that she is SUPER competent, once she gets her feet under her. She can shoot, engage in hand-to-hand combat, rapidly analyse a situation and come up with a solution, and hold her own against a raging Jason Statham.

Really, it’s the fights with Statham that make this movie so much fun. He’s a fantastic comic actor. He’s been in something with the Rock, right? I feel like that’s a thing the world needs.

McCarthy, glammed up to the nines, snapping at Statham: And by the way, I can see your gun sticking out of your back pocket, unless you're SO EXTREME that you've got a second dick coming out of your hip!

Statham looking scruffy and hot and oh-so-lickable and confused like a puppy dog that can’t quite figure out what the answer to “who’s a good doggie?”

Anyway, as a woman of size, and one that likes martial arts and generalized ass-kicking, it was SUPER COOL to see McCarthy kicking ass. It wasn’t a joke, it wasn’t meant to be silly, it was just, look, this woman can totally kick ass and she’s good. There were disguises and cover identities that were the dowdy kind of person you often see a fat woman portrayed as, and then a conscious decision to let McCarthy be glamorous and pretty. I’ve seen people go, “Well, the thing that makes this funny is ‘ha ha how can a fat girl be a spy isn’t that ridiculous'” but for real, while that is the set up, the movie makes her GOOD AT HER JOB.

ALSO, when she fights? Unlike in SO MANY Serious Action Movies, she does just fight women. When she fights dudes, it’s as vicious and high stakes as two men fighting. It drives me bonkers when “girls can only fight girls.” I want to see women and men fighting when the ground is as even as one can make it.

The cast is just genius. Allison Janney is the Deputy Director of the CIA, and basically this is what CJ Cregg did after leaving the White House and bumming around California for ten years (and if finally where she can swear as much as she wants. Hearing Allison Janney say “fuck” was something I didn’t know my life was missing). Miranda Hart is another analyst and one of Susan’s BFFs. Jason Statham (I just want to LICK that man) is a rage-aholic agent who goes rogue because if you’re in a spy movie, you need someone to go rogue, and if you have someone going rogue, you get Statham. Rose Byrne is the arms dealer with amazing big hair and impossibly high heels, and she’s a delight. Jude Law’s accent is dodgy. He’s there, too. Whatever.

There were two things that I was concerned about that were mostly avoided. One, that we would fall into the trope of women competing and bad mouthing each other. It helps that there are four women in the main cast in the CIA alone, plus two antagonist women. Yes, there’s some backbiting, and I kinda wish they hadn’t gone that route, but it was brief and not a through line. Thank god. There’s lots of women supporting women, both personally and professionally, without any heavy-handedness.

The other concern I had is that we’d go the route of “Oh, Susan is a strong independant women who doesn’t need a man” which is a trope that tends to come up when the woman in question is of color or fat (or both). It would be nice to see those women get some, too! A number of men hit on Susan for various reasons, and like none of them are because ‘har har har, isn’t it funny that someone would want to fuck a fat girl?’

Click for spoilers!

I spent the entire movie wanting Susan to get herself a Jason Statham hate-bang, and I GOT ONE.

 

I really liked the character of Susan, because when Janney finds out that she KICKED TOTAL ASS at the Academy, the reasons she ended up sitting a desk as an analyst are super realistic- she has self-confidence issues stemming from her parents, and Law’s character recognized her awesomeness and used it for his own needs, rather than mentoring her like he was supposed to. I have my own self-esteem issues, and this just made me so happy. Also Miranda Hart, who has made a career out of being the unlikely heroine of her own story (she bags 50 Cent Piece!) and is amazing and more Americans need to know who she is.

Okay, so there’s this bullshit narrative of women can’t be funny, and we all know that’s bullshit, and there’s this idea tha fat women can only be funny if we’re making fun of them for being fat, and THAT’S bullshit, and I think that Pual Fieg knows that too. Go see this movie, even if just for Statham and McCarthy hollering “fuck!” at each other a lot.

Between Kingsman and Spy, Spy wins, hands down.


Spy is in theatres now, and you can find tickets (US) at Fandango and Moviefone.

 

Add Your Comment →

  1. Karen H near Tampa says:

    Review is great but Jason’s picture won’t display!!

  2. Cristiane says:

    You didn’t mention Peter Serafinawicz (sp?) who played Aldo. Really funny. I LOVED this movie. Let’s hope it’s the first in a series for Melissa McCarthy (and they bring back all the supporting people, as well).

  3. cleo says:

    I’m so glad to read this review. The trailers made me think all the jokes were at MM’s expense, so I’m glad it’s not true. It sounds like the perfect summer movie.

  4. Karen H near Tampa says:

    And now that I’ve looked at other pages and returned, the Jason scruffy adorable picture is showing.

  5. CC says:

    I can hardly wait! She is one of my favorites. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen The Heat. And Miranda Hart is a gut splitting funny comedienne and my body twin, though she’s an inch taller. Her UK series, Miranda, is so worth tracking down online.

  6. Lostshadows says:

    Okay, you’ve sold me.

    I was on the fence on this movie because 1)the potential issues mentioned in the review and 2)comedies just don’t generally appeal to me, but something about, parts of, the ads seemed very promising.

  7. Caz says:

    and basically this is what CJ Cregg did after leaving the White House and bumming around California for ten years

    YES – THIS!

  8. Ras says:

    awesome! i probably wouldn’t have watched this, because i love mccarthy but i don’t love her taste in projects. but now i most def will. thanks!

  9. EC Spurlock says:

    This sounds like something I desperately need to take an afternoon off and see right now.

  10. Kate says:

    I watched the movie because of this review. SO WORTH IT.

    Also, I want a compilation video of all of Statham’s lines!

  11. De says:

    I want that compilation video of Statham, so I can check it against his previous movies. A lot of what he was saying sounded familiar. But that could just be that all over the top action movies are over the top.

  12. Overall, this was a fun movie. I thought Statham was the best part of the movie — he was just so over-the-top with his ridiculousness. His scenes with McCarthy were definitely the highlight for me.

    Aldo and his antics got old really fast for me, though. I really wanted McCarthy to punch him in the face the way she did the bad guys.

  13. Lostshadows says:

    Okay, I saw it. It was funny.

    There were some issues, and far more graphic injuries than I expected in a comedy.

  14. Kathy says:

    I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT SEEING THIS FILM!

    Well I am now anyway! I have been nervous about because like you say it’d be so easy for it to fall into ‘fat-girl slapstick’ territory. However, it sounds like a genuinely amazing film! So Hurrah! *goes to book tickets immediately*

  15. Jen says:

    We just saw this movie last night and it was SO SO SO good. McCarthy is just perfect in this, and as you point out, the movie works because it doesn’t make her the butt of the joke. Well, sometimes it does, but it is done with her consent, and it doesn’t detract from her character’s competency and intelligence. I actually loved Jude Law’s character precisely because he was kind of forgettable. I liked that he’s supposed to be suave and smart and bad ass but when you compare him to McCarthy, he’s just blah. And yes, I loved Rose Byrne. I thought she was so funny! There is plenty of obnoxious comedy and violence, so if that bothers you stay away. But for me this was hilarious.

  16. Vicki says:

    Thanks for the review. I just saw this with my daughter and grandson – gave me a chance to try to explain the Bechdel test to a 12 year old – and the movie passed in spades. Women with agency! Kick-ass women! Action. Laughter. I enjoyed it. Thanks for pointing me in this direction.

  17. Jennifer says:

    **Small spoiler** Close to the end, she is introduced as Miss Havisham, nobody in the theater caught it or laughed but totally brilliant line!

  18. Laura says:

    I LOVED this movie!! I was so glad to see a woman as a main character in a spy movie. And a woman, who happens to not be stick-thin, not being portrayed as:
    1. stupid 2. bumbling 3. incompetent

    *Slight Spoiler*
    If you sit through the credits, there are some funny bits about the missions that come after the movie ends.
    and PLUS, at the very end of the credits, there’s a funny funny outtake.
    Which, from what I understand from the interviews with the actors, was what making the movie was like- everyone trying to crack everyone else up. 😉

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