THE SPY WHO DUMPED ME  2.0***

    The buddy action/comedy has long been a staple of Hollywood films. In the 80s it became common in the buddy Cop format after the success of "Lethal Weapon" amongst others. In the new film "The Spy Who Dumped Me"; audiences are introduced to Audrey (Mila Kunis), and her friend Morgan (Kate McKinnon) two thirty-year-old best friends in Los Angeles, who are thrust unexpectedly into an international conspiracy when Audrey's ex-boyfriend shows up at their apartment with a team of deadly assassins on his trail. Surprising even themselves, the duo jump into action, on the run throughout Europe from assassins and a suspicious-but-charming British agent, as they hatch a plan to save the world.

This might have been a stylish little spy movie.  But the movie isn't a spy movie—not really. There are no exciting secret-agents on display, and no detestable lunatic villain either. And the plot, involving yet another world threat from yet another hazy terrorist organization, is uninteresting. All of which is supposed to be okay, I guess, because this isn't a straight-up spy flick—it's a female buddy spy comedy. Okay. But then shouldn't it be funny—or at least funnier than what we have here?  

The central problem here is that the two leads, Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon, never mesh. There are times when they don't even seem to be in the same movie.  I love McKinnon, but she's over-equipped with one-liners here, and it's a glaring problem. Whenever there's a lull in the attempted zaniness, you know she's going unleash some kooky joke, and then she does, and then you give a sigh of amusement and wait for her to do it again. It's a comic strategy of diminishing returns, and it tends to leave Kunis looking sidelined. Neither actress is well-served by the poop gags, and the movie itself is undermined by its determination to blend comedy with bloody, limb-severing violence.

It’s the kind of movie that contains within it what could’ve been a 7 out of 10 as an action movie and a 7 out of 10 as a comedy, but when smashed together, it’s more like a 3.5 out of 10. That’s because the comedy serves mainly to puncture the realism of the action and the action renders the jokes irrelevant. It’s no wonder the movie ends up being kind of forgettable — it’s devouring itself while we watch.

Rated R for heavy violence and foul language throughout, with some crude sexual material and graphic nudity |