If you are of a certain age you received most of your impressions of the intricate dangers of international espionage from James Bond movies. (Or possibly from Mad Magazine’s Spy vs Spy, which bore about the same relation to reality.) Of course the Bond stories were intended as spoofs to begin with, and if the humor was basic and the jokes lame, well, at that age we didn’t care.
Recently, as the continuing Bond series has grown grimmer and more violent, the equally popular spy comedies, such as last year’s Kingsman:The Secret Service, have kept pace, providing lots of mayhem and blood to go with the laughs.
Screenwriters have recently latched onto the idea (first detailed in some thriller novel or other) that when people get shot in the forehead, a pink cloud billows into the air behind their heads. This is fair warning that in SPY, the new comedy that opened this past weekend, there are a lot of pink clouds. There are also some very tasty travelogue-type sequences filmed in photogenic locations such as Paris, Rome, and Budapest, and some very funny performances by some very talented actors.
If you’ve seen the trailers you might think the whole movie is a witty give-and-take between Jude Law and Melissa McCarthy, while in fact Law, and his toupée, get comparatively little screen time, and McCarthy carries the whole risible effort. If you’ve followed Melissa McCarthy’s career at least since her breakout role in 2011’s Bridesmaids, you’ll be familiar with her stock character: a misfit who keeps blundering through uncomfortable situations with little or no embarrassment.
SPY opens with Law in a tuxedo tailored to the swooning point causing Bond-type mayhem at a champagne reception in a very toney villa. As he dispatches thug after thug with smooth moves and deadly gunplay, it becomes gradually evident (no spoilers here, it was already on the Graham Norton Show) that he’s only able to do this because dumpy desk agent Susan Cooper (McCarthy) is feeding him instant information through his earbud. Now, when things calm down we start to wonder what kind of remote surveillance system allows a CIA agent in DC to follow the movements of everybody inside a building in Europe, and then we think, Oh, what the hell, let’s just have fun with it.
That’s the key to this movie: to forget about its predictable plot and preposterous set-ups, and just think of it as a fairy tale, one with lots of blue language to go along with those pink clouds.
McCarthy is in her element as Agent Cooper, who doesn’t know how to dress or act in high, or even middle society, but is always ready to give it a try. It’s when another preposterous situation erupts in Europe that the CIA boss decides that Cooper’s very ordinariness is the best cover, and sends her off to Paris, where many more absurdities proliferate.
Without giving too much away, Cooper finds herself thrown together with a Bulgarian aristocrat (?), played by Rose Byrne exhibiting splendid hauteur and a real potty mouth, who is trying to sell a portable nuclear device to a really bad man. As the formula requires, the two mismatched female leads begin to have a grudging admiration for each other and end up almost pals.
Agent Cooper does, however, have a real sidekick at the CIA, another desk agent who gets hustled out into the field to show her particular brand of ineptitude. This is a role tailored to the talents of Miranda Hart, a British actress, comedian, and writer who has been in a few films I guarantee you haven’t seen. I hope very much that this role jump-starts a much-deserved career.
Hart is only one of a madcap supporting cast that works through the convoluted storytelling like a real ensemble. In addition to Law and Byrne, there is Jason Statham as a Brit CIA agent who is always in a rage, Björn Gustafsson as a Swedish thug whom Agent Cooper reduces to tears, and rapper 50 Cent and Ukrainian drag queen Verka Serduchka as themselves. (Maybe there’s a huge drag subculture in Ukraine, which is making Putin so mad at them he could just SPIT…) But it’s McCarthy in charge all the way, and the movie’s fun is watching her take Eurotrash to pieces in very satisfying ways.
IN OTHER NEWS: Tomorrow, Saturday, June 13, Western Maine Storytelling is presenting a double-barrelled event starring the double talent of Eshu Bumpus, from the Boston Area, and Motoko from Osaka, Japan.
“We are a unique collaboration,” they explain. “We’re a combination of differences – different energies, different cultural backgrounds. What links us together is our love for music, for sharing stories, for bringing people together.”
On Saturday Eshu and Motoko will be presenting two programs in Farmington. At 10 in the morning, they will perform a family show of mime, music, and multicultural folktales at the Farmington Public Library; this performance is specially designed for little kids, and it’s absolutely free.
Then tomorrow night they will perform their extended program, “Chicken-Fried Sushi: Stories to Nourish Your Soul,” recommended for adults and older children, at the Emery Community Arts Center. Admission is $10 at the door, and the fun starts at 7:30.
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