Review | Film review: Spy - Paul Feig scores with stylish CIA action comedy
Spy is a rib-tickler with a healthy dose of Secret Service shenanigans. Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids) revels in a role more multifaceted than Hollywood has so far allowed her.
Director: Paul Feig
Category: IIB (English, French, Italian)
Espionage is aprofitable business for Hollywood at the moment. Matthew Vaughn's put the fun back into the genre. To come, we have Guy Ritchie's . and maybe even Daniel Craig's 007 will have a smile on his face by the time rolls around.
Until then, we have Paul Feig's CIA action-comedy to contend with — a rib-tickler with a healthy dose of Secret Service shenanigans. After directing her in both and , Feig's secret weapon is Melissa McCarthy, who revels in a role more multifaceted than Hollywood has so far allowed her.
She plays Susan Cooper, a middle-aged, low-level CIA analyst — competent but desk-bound. As the film opens, her job is to guide Jude Law's suave, Bond-like spy, as he hunts a missing nuclear device. But when he is compromised — permanently — the agency has to find a spy to take his place. The rookie Cooper volunteers and soon she's out in the field.
McCarthy's usual crude screen image has been replaced here by a slightly more pathetic/sympathetic figure, as evidenced by the Midwestern-loser disguises her boss (Allison Janney, on fine form) keeps forcing her to wear. A human punching bag for just about every other character, her only ally is a fellow CIA minion, played by the British comic actress Miranda Hart, whose unique brand of self-loathing falls very flat here.
