The Spy Who Dumped Me
Directed by: Susanna Fogel
Written by: Susanna Fogel & David Iserson
Starring: Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Sam Heughan, Justin Theroux, Ivanna Sakhno, Hasan Minhaj, Gillian Anderson, Jane Curtin, Paul Reiser, Fred Melamed, James Fleet, Carolyn Pickles, Dustin Demri-Burns, Lolly Adefope, Ruby Kammer, Genevieve McCarthy, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Kev Adams
Action/Comedy - 116 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 2 Aug 2018
Written by: Susanna Fogel & David Iserson
Starring: Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Sam Heughan, Justin Theroux, Ivanna Sakhno, Hasan Minhaj, Gillian Anderson, Jane Curtin, Paul Reiser, Fred Melamed, James Fleet, Carolyn Pickles, Dustin Demri-Burns, Lolly Adefope, Ruby Kammer, Genevieve McCarthy, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Kev Adams
Action/Comedy - 116 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 2 Aug 2018
There is a comedy sub-genre for characters who are in over their heads, usually due to ineptness on their part. The two girls in The Spy Who Dumped Me realize they are no match for the dozens of trained assassins they encounter and are only fumbling through their farcical escapades by dumb luck. They are more self aware than Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd in Spies Like Us who were sure they were elite. The most recent cousin to The Spy Who Dumped Me, Melissa McCarthy’s Spy, was somewhere in the middle as she was already an adept intelligence analyst back at the office, so why not translate those skills to the field? Director and co-writer Susanna Fogel aims to resurrect the familiar plot frame of laughs through near-death experiences and fish out of water naiveté and succeeds in doing exactly that for the film’s first half before the tidal wave regrettably loses momentum and direction resulting in a disappointing muddle.
Riffing on James Bond via Austin Powers with the title, The Spy Who Dumped Me, Fogel hired the right talent each character deserves. Audrey (Mila Kunis, Bad Moms) is the straight man in the duo - the reactor. She is more level-headed, cautious, and spends more time than she would like reigning in the zany Morgan (Kate McKinnon, Ferdinand). Fogel and co-writer David Iserson deliberately over-write Morgan. She is so unbelievable she almost escapes comedy and borders on mental illness. Morgan quickly latches on to the bumbling spy wannabe lifestyle and not only wants to see it through until the end, but even has designs on maintaining the pretense until she will inevitably get bored of it and wander away somewhere else.
Riffing on James Bond via Austin Powers with the title, The Spy Who Dumped Me, Fogel hired the right talent each character deserves. Audrey (Mila Kunis, Bad Moms) is the straight man in the duo - the reactor. She is more level-headed, cautious, and spends more time than she would like reigning in the zany Morgan (Kate McKinnon, Ferdinand). Fogel and co-writer David Iserson deliberately over-write Morgan. She is so unbelievable she almost escapes comedy and borders on mental illness. Morgan quickly latches on to the bumbling spy wannabe lifestyle and not only wants to see it through until the end, but even has designs on maintaining the pretense until she will inevitably get bored of it and wander away somewhere else.
Audrey’s boyfriend, Drew (Justin Theroux, Star Wars: The Last Jedi), speaks on the audience’s behalf when he first meets Morgan, “Aren’t you a little much?” Drew is the eponymous spy who opts for the classy move and breaks up with with Audrey by text. Tacky, to be sure. However, in an early visual compare and contrast between Audrey’s plodding, go nowhere Los Angeles life and Drew’s persistent kill or be killed action/thriller lifestyle in Vilnius, Lithuania, we understand why he only had a second or two to call it quits - no time to chat when even a simple trip to the market morphs into a bloody morass full of snapping limbs and exploding brains.
The Spy Who Dumped Me earns it hard R-rating not so much from the swears and adult situations; rather, Fogel and Iserson choose to unleash graphic gore upon an unsuspecting audience. It’s a situation comedy; we’re used to chuckling at the bloodless violence and moving on to the next pun. Instead, we soon learn any character can die at any moment through any sort of disgusting mechanism. We’re on our toes. Bullet holes to the skull, knives through any number of body parts, head in the boiling fondue, and chopped-off fingers for easy transporting are only a few examples of Fogel’s intention to take all the standard spy stereotypes and turn them up to 11.
The Spy Who Dumped Me was working. The girls jet off to Vienna to complete a mission, they encounter a deadly model/gymnast/torture artist and at times their outrageous accidents border on hysterical. Yet, the film collapses on top of itself. The pace slows, exposition explains backstory, emotional attachments are formed to create dimensions; worthy efforts for any script, but The Spy Who Dumped Me is not capable of balancing the shift in tone and making the two halves work together. The visual humor hits its pinnacle with the stoic assassin gymnast (Ivanna Sakhno) peers through her sniper scope to locate “two dumb American girls” and sees every horrible, but probably true, American stereotype. There are corresponding humor troughs through a Balzac joke and Morgan’s infiltration of a Cirque de Soleil troupe.
Sitcom fans will most likely forgive the film’s imbalance and laugh all the way home before certain plot holes take over and make them forget about the movie lest they circle the edge of insanity trying to unravel inconsistencies. Others will admire another over-powering Kate McKinnon character and remind everyone she is their favorite Saturday Night Live performer. However, the silent majority will appreciate another accidental spy comedy, a first half which almost succeeds in carrying the film before drowning under its own weight, and most likely forget The Spy Who Dumped Me ever existed.
Comment Box is loading comments...
