Thursday 16 January 2020

My Spy (2020) - Movie Review



In 2008, when Dwayne Johnson’s star as an actor was beginning its initial rise, Peter Segal’s take on the classic spy show Get Smart gave The Artist Who Wants Us To Stop Calling Him The Rock a proper shot at the mainstream, beyond his previous stardom as a wrestler. A little over a decade later, Segal seems to be on a similar tear, stepping back into the comedic spy game with Dave Bautista, the latest success story in that WWE-to-the-big-screen transition and, between crowd-pleasers like his work as Drax The Destroyer in the MCU and critical darlings like his opening role in Blade Runner 2049, this should be a slam dunk. Unfortunately, this latest attempt at carving out Bautista’s place in a more family-friendly lane is a major fizzler.

This is one of those disheartening situations where everyone on-screen, from Bautista as the struggling soldier-turned-spy, to Kristen Schaal as his CIA analyst partner, even Chloe Coleman’s impossibly precocious child who brings herself into the larger espionage capering, are all quite good in their roles. What makes it disheartening that it ends up being a lot of talent put into the wrong places, making this whole thing feel like it’s wasting everyone in attendance, which is compounded by how they all end up tearing at different aspects of the production’s overall composition.

With Schaal, her frequently ad-libbed quips are a little too good at pointing out the general lack-of-sense present in the script, poking fun at it without giving any real inclination why we should care about what’s happening anyway. With Coleman, as fun as it is watching her own every second she gets as the preternaturally-talented spy-in-the-making, her on-screen aptitude is so bound by the requirements of the plot at any given moment that it ends up failing at the landing. Like, right when her natural skills would help her the most in-story, that's when they're conveniently sidelined. And with Bautista, it’s with how there are previous and quite lucrative examples of former wrestlers translating their in-the-ring charisma to the cinema, and yet he apparently thought the best way of doing that translating was portraying one of the rock-stupidest ‘spies’ I can recall seeing on film.

Admittedly, that’s part of the point, putting him in the quite precious position of being shown up at his own job by a kid who hasn’t even hit double-digits yet. However, given that position amounts to a lot of emotional blackmail alongside recurring moments of actual blackmail at the hands of Coleman’s Sophie, the end result is a bit of a drag. Okay, it’s a lot of a drag, to the point where it feels at least twice as long than its 100-minute run time would suggest. Even ignoring my ‘liar revealed’ pet peeve that forms the core of the narrative, it’s difficult to take any of this at face value, or even as farce, when it feels like the writers are barely even trying to make things compelling. Coming from the Hoeber brothers, best known for their adaptations of Warren Ellis’ Red, I expected better.

And coming from the director of Get Smart, I most certainly expected better from Peter Segal, who comes across here like he’s never even touched action before. It ends up falling into the same trap that his previous effort Second Act did, in that it feels messy and aimless because it can’t find a middle ground between all the different things it’s trying to get across. Except here, there’s only two things to focus on, the domestic comedy and the spy thrills, and yet there’s still a lot of strain in balancing them.

At best, it only highlights Segal’s relative lack of experience with the genre, with a final shootout that looks like something even the editor of Taken 3 would laugh at. And at worst, it puts the audience in the same surveillance role as the spy leads, only we’re being deliberately pushed towards the least interesting things to look at at any given moment. Also, this is a film about nuclear arms deals and the potential of an entire city getting levelled, but with a PG rating… calling this ‘neutered’ is an understatement.

This is just a miserable sit. A showcasing for pretty decent actors, and even some potential up-and-comers like with Chloe Coleman, but all in service to a story that just fills up time rather than actually doing or saying anything, and a director who needs to cut out the bloat and focus. I don’t want to believe that the man behind two of Adam Sandler’s strongest comedic ventures, not to mention fully selling me on Dwayne Johnson with Get Smart, has reached this level of apathy, but he’s not exactly giving me reason to think otherwise.

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