James Bond flicks are the subject
of yet another spoof in rotund funny-woman Melissa McCarthy’s latest starring
vehicle, the R-rated action-comedy ‘Spy’ from Paul Feig, who previously
directed two of McCarthy’s most successful films, ‘Bridesmaids’ and ‘The
Heat.’ “Do we really need another dumb
spy parody?” was my big question heading into this movie, but ‘Spy’ turned out to
be quite the surprise (considering that past McCarthy films are
a mixed bag) and is as fun and entertaining as the critics
are saying.
McCarthy is Susan Cooper, a
desk-jockey CIA analyst and the sedentary lesser half of an inseparable team with
tuxedo-wearing superspy Bradley Fine (Jude Law), whom she pines for
like a geeky high schooler daydreaming about dating the star
quarterback. Alas, after things went
horribly wrong for her partner while he's on a mission to prevent the sale of a suitcase nuke on the black market by sexy Bulgarian villainess Raina Boyanov (her
‘Bridesmaids’ co-star Rose Byrne looking babe-licious), the most unspylike Susan was
thrust into the deadly mission and finds herself globe-trotting through Paris,
Rome and Budapest to stop the nefarious Boyanov from selling her WMD to the
highest bidder. Much hilarity ensues as
we follow Susan's misadventures. Jason
Statham was also excellent and funny as the tough and garrulous (albeit dumb as a bag of hammers) agent Ford.
‘Spy’ worked on numerous levels
and got the most out of its simple premise of a sad sack, middle-aged overweight woman
as ass-kicking superspy. And boy, did
she kick ass! Defying stereotypes
has seldom been so funny and McCarthy carried the movie with ease and aplomb without
becoming annoying like she did in some of her other roles, making ‘Spy’ her best movie to date. With the successes of ‘Spy’ and ‘Kingsman: The Secret Service' earlier this year,
the spy spoof is back in a big way. Groovy baby, yeah!
Grade: A
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