There’s a terrific buddy comedy somewhere in the puddle of The Spy Who Dumped Me, but in its globetrotting action, and amped-up funniness, it refuses to crystallise itself.
The filmic land of spies with their suave men and stunning women always carries such a serious face that it begs to be parodied.
In 2015, Paul Feig turned Melissa McCarthy’s paper-pusher Susan Cooper into a hilarious spy, and now Susanna Fogel has decided to plant Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon, two bright talents of American comedy into an international conspiracy.
The plot punning on Roger Moore’s 1977 actioner is self-explanatory. Mila Kunis’ Audrey gets dumped by her boyfriend Drew (Justin Theroux), but she has her best friend Morgan (Kate McKinnon) to console her.
Soon Audrey discovers that her boyfriend is actually an undercover CIA agent, and following an attack at her apartment which leads to his death, she resolves to deliver the package to a specific location in Vienna.
“Do you want to die not having been to Europe, or do you want to die having been to Europe?” says Morgan whose last name as you guessed it, is Freeman. The rest of the movie follows the girls on the run through different European cities while agents Sebastian (Sam Heughan) and his buddy Duffer (Hasan Minhaj) stay on their trail. The dangers lurk all over, especially in the form of a gymnast turned assassin played with icy skill by Ivanna Sakhno.
Buddy comedies usually rely on sparring partners, but in Fogel’s imagination (she co-wrote the script with David Iserson), the only sacrosanct thing in the film is the unwavering trust between the two leads, even though both are told at various points to not trust anyone.
Saturday Night Live star McKinnon is the loose cannon of the twosome, and she fires up her scenes in such high spirits that sometimes the film finds it hard to keep up with her. If Ghostbusters had her in extremes, The Spy Who Dumped Me demonstrates that she is more than a sketch artist. Mila Kunis plays her character with a screwball efficiency. She remains unfazed throughout the proceedings, a trick that provides a terrific foil for McKinnon’s blustering presence.
But the film runs out of steam quite early since it doesn’t have much plot to hold on to. The twists can be foreseen, and the jokes don’t quite land where intended. Add to that the film’s ideas of staging action sequences and chase scenes in gory violence appear more like missteps rather than articulate ambition. There are ample ideas of comedy and action, but the hybrid keeps looking for clarity in the clutter.
With its eye on subversion and gender politics, The Spy Who Dumped Me could have been a game changer. Alas, it wastes the possibilities away with its lack of balance and misses a satisfying wholeness in its execution. Turns out we’d have to wait a little more to see how a lady can take the mickey out of Mr. Bond.
(The writer is a journalist, a screenwriter, and a content developer who believes in the insanity of words, in print or otherwise. He tweets @RanjibMazumder).
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