MCCARTHY: (As Susan Cooper) Hey, how'd you get that picture of me? I look amazing. The moment I saw you standing there in that abortion of a dress as if to say this is what I've got, world. It's the Bulgarian clown in you.īYRNE: (As Rayna Boyanov) She was marvelous, but she was different - eccentric like you are. MCCARTHY: (As Susan Cooper) Oh, really? You know that, I mean, you and I are - you and I are pretty close in age.īYRNE: (As Rayna Boyanov) You're funny. ROSE BYRNE: (As Rayna Boyanov) You remind me of my mother. MELISSA MCCARTHY: (As Susan Cooper) Why are you being so nice to me? It can't just be because I remind you of some sad, Bulgarian clown. After Susan buys a fancy gown, slips into a luxe casino and ends up saving Rayna's life, the villainess takes her aboard a private airplane and attempts to bond. Her breezy, mean-girl putdowns are exquisitely underplayed. Oh, but things improve with the arrival of Rose Byrne, an actress who seems to be able to do anything. But as a macho braggart agent who turns out to be a stumble bum, he tries too hard to be funny and kills the jokes.
Jason Statham is a droll presence in conventional action movies - his slow, cockney burn, a delight.
The movie will win the lovable Hart a new audience, but the timing of her scenes with McCarthy is horrible. For a while, McCarthy is paired with another overlooked female analyst played by the tall, flamboyantly gawky British comedian Miranda Hart. Even a lot of the comedy is in a crude, whacking style.Įarly on, Susan is mousy and feels inferior, requiring McCarthy to stammer stupidly opposite Law who's good, despite obvious material.
Feig moved the boundary posts on TV with "Freaks and Geeks" but he settled into Hollywood conventionality and apart from a gory fight scene in a kitchen between McCarthy and an assassin, he doesn't really hit his action marks. By definition, films like "Spy" are mixed bags lurching between slapstick and violence. But if she didn't act, there'd be no movie. The disguises the agency gives Susan are ostentatiously frumpy, and she's warned to observe and not act. The story calls for Susan to go into the field because, unlike the other agents, her identity is unknown to Rose Byrne's Rayna, the heir of a recently deceased Eastern European arms kingpin. Her character, Susan Cooper, has settled into the role of a subordinate, a headquarters-based CIA analyst assigned to help a 007-like smoothie she adores played by Jude Law. The difference, obviously, is McCarthy is a woman, and so there's a female disempowerment backstory. The central joke of the movie is what if we made a comic actor who looks like McCarthy a James Bond-like undercover secret agent? It's a good joke similar to lots of movies over the last, well, century from at least Buster Keaton in which hapless clowns are forced to impersonate manly heroes. The first thing that happened to Melissa McCarthy after "Bridesmaids" was that she was paired with Sandra Bullock in the female buddy cop movie "The Heat." Now she has her own big budget action vehicle, "Spy," which reunites her with "Bridesmaids" and "The Heat" director Paul Feig. And it's even more important now when so much revenue comes from foreign markets that prefer action over comedy.
McCarthy's breakout performance in the 2011 comedy "Bridesmaids" earned her a supporting actress Oscar nomination.ĭAVID EDELSTEIN, BYLINE: Back when Hugh Grant made his name as an adorably abashed romantic lead in "Four Weddings And A Funeral" I remember a showbiz paper reporting the one question on the lips of studio executives - can Hugh Grant hold a gun? That's still what executives ask when an actor gives a breakthrough performance. Our film critic David Edelstein has a review of the new espionage comedy "Spy," which stars Melissa McCarthy and features Jude Law and Rose Byrne.