Film review: Spy (2015)

There are some people who are just funny.  They exude it.  Just their very presence can be funny.  Bill Murray is an example.  This can have its downsides, at least for those people, if they have ambitions to do serious acting.  Watch Bill Murray in The Razor's Edge, a passion project for him, and he just can't come across as sincere.  Anyway, Melissa McCarthy is another.  Her version of Sean Spicer made the early days of the Trump years almost bearable.  But another trouble that a lot of these people encounter is that filmmakers seem to get lazy when they've got such people on board.  It's almost as if they think the film doesn't have to be good.  Eddie Murphy, Richard Pryor, Robin Williams and yes, Bill Murray have been in more than their share of stinkers as a result.  But Spy is an example of doing it right: have an actual film with an actual plot as the sturdy scaffolding that can contain your funny person's brand of riffing.  And it helps to surround her with a ton of talented co-conspirators.  The basic premise is that McCarthy is the eyes and ears, sitting behind a computer in the basement of CIA headquarters, of handsome hot-shot agent Jude Law.  

But really she should be an agent herself, it's just that she's got a crush on Law's Bradley Fine, and he persuaded her that they were the perfect team.  But then, after the opening mission where he (accidentally) kills a Hungarian villain who has his own nuke, he is tracking down said villain's daughter (the only person left who might know the nuke's whereabouts) when she kills him, but only after announcing to the camera contact lens through which McCarthy's Susan Cooper can see what he sees that she knows all of the CIA's top agents in the field and will dispatch any that follow her.  This is Susan's chance to go into the field herself, and because she has a (tough as nails) female boss (Allison Janney) who is not persuaded by the male agents' scoffing at Susan's suggestion, she gets her wish (and her basement pal, played by British comedian Miranda Hart, 

slides over into her old seat).  Susan isn't exactly being given Jude Law's job - she's only supposed to observe and report, and she is given a string of absurdly dowdy and demeaning aliases, 

but so disgusted is top CIA agent Rick Ford (Jason Statham - why are most of the CIA's employees British? - who sends himself up nicely)

by her appointment that he quits in disgust and will show up in the field complicating matters for her.  There follow lots of highjinks, chase scenes and stunts that, while played for laughs, are as well executed as any Bond film (well, maybe any Roger Moore Bond film), 

and some truly gnarly kills.  Is it a good film?  No, not really.  Is it a film that I laughed out loud at more than at any film in recent memory?  Absolutely!  And that's all down to McCarthy, who is given space to be just very very funny.  See it if you need cheering up, or even if you don't.  There's even a twist that neither of us was expecting.