(spoiler free)
So if Bond is too serious and Bourne is now boring maybe we should leave it to the ladies to serve up some more campy caper spy fun? Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon certainly think so as they team up in new buddy comedy ‘The Spy Who Dumped Me’. After discovering that her ex-boyfriend is actually a CIA agent, Audrey Stockton (Kunis) along with her best friend Morgan (McKinnon) are drawn into a deadly web of international espionage!
The narrative here is nothing to get excited about though, the film has built the story around its catchy and playful title just to allow for another buddy comedy style story with the same tried and tested cliches. Once the initial context is set up and the story can really begin it manages to gain little to no momentum and fails to find any for the majority of the film. The pace is a major issues which isn’t helped by the use of flashbacks to one year previous from the present action. Thankfully this doesn’t happen too much and the film doesn’t run two equally weighted stories parallel to each other which is what it feels like it might do. However, after the flashbacks stop the film just refuses to do the same, feeling even longer and more tiresome than the hunt for the next James Bond! The action sequences are one of the only saving graces of the film, they make up for the lack of pace and inject a whole heap of energy into the mission which is often desperately needed.
Any buddy movie has to be funny but ‘The Spy Who Dumped Me’ just isn’t funny enough. There’s hope early on as Kate McKinnon’s entrance on screen will have your funny bone well and truly tickled but this quickly dwindles as the film serves up average at best gags with plenty falling completely flat. Sometimes in cases like this the cast can save a mediocre script and if anyone was going to it was McKinnon, her very presence on screen is often hysterical, the lady just has funny bones. However, even she can’t make this weak material work on this occasion. Mila Kunis is fine as the other half of this unlikely spying double act but she’s always in McKinnon’s shadow and doesn’t really offer anything that unique. The supporting performers do well with their smaller roles and are cast well, although none are that memorable and similarly to McKinnon can’t do enough to save the film from being a mission failed.
After magazines are emptied and holsters hung up it has to be said that this is one spy comedy that would have been better kept top secret. I would usually say it’s worth it for McKinnon alone, but with this material unfortunately I don’t even think that’s the case here. Don’t waste your time or money on this spy comedy flop, instead why not rewind back to 2015 and Melissa McCarthy’s ‘Spy‘, that’s how you do it ladies!
Written by Hamish Calvert
Rating – 3/10
Question: What is your all time favourite spy comedy film?
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